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adamwatchesmovies · 1 year

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Love Actually (2003)

Love Actually has grown to become a bit of a modern-day Christmas staple. I can see why, but won’t be including it in my roster. With a whopping 10 different stories interwoven through its 136-minute running time, of course some of them hit. The film has its sweet moments… but are they worth sitting through all the clichés and groan-inducing, painfully predictable, been-there-done-that scenes which could’ve been left out?

Set during the five weeks leading to Christmas, the characters and stories featured include:

Rock and roll legend Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) promoting his (terrible) Christmas single at the behest of his longtime manager, Joe (Gregor Fisher).

Juliet (Keira Knightley) learning her husband's best friend, Mark (Andrew Lincoln), is in love with her days after her wedding.

Jamie (Colin Firth) who discovers his girlfriend (Sienna Guillory) is cheating on him with his brother. After exiling himself to his French cottage, he begins falling in love with his Portuguese housekeeper, Aurélia (Lúcia Moniz), despite the language barrier separating them.

Harry (Alan Rickman), who is comfortably married to Karen (Emma Thompson) but tempted by his new secretary, Mia (Heike Makatsch). He does nothing to dissuade her advances, risking everything in the process.

Karen’s brother, David (Hugh Grant), is the recently elected Prime Minister. He cannot help but notice Natalie (Marine McCuthcheon), a household staff member of 10 Downing Street. The attraction is mutual but the pressures of the office compel David to push her away.

Newly-widowed Daniel (Liam Neeson), who finds solace from his grief by helping his stepson, Sam (Thomas Sangster), win over the girl he’s fallen in love with, Joanna (Olivia Olson).

Sarah (Laura Linney), has loved her co-worker Karl (Rodrigo Santoro) for years. When she’s told the entire office knows how she feels, she finally begins to muster the courage to act upon them.

Fed up with all of his unsucessful attempts to woo women, Colin (Kris Marshall) decides - despite the protests of his best friend, Tony Abdul Salis) - to travel to America and use his British accent to pick up ladies.

John (Martin Freeman) and Judy (Joanna Page) are professional stand-ins for films in the middle of rehearsing a series of sex scenes. Delighted to find someone they can simply talk to during the long, boring stretches in which they stand around naked - without it feeling awkward - a genuine attraction develops.

The stories are tied together with knots of varying looseness. Colin is a waiter at Juliet and Peter’s wedding. On the way to the airport, Daniel and his son bump into Rufus (Rowan Atkinson), an obsessive jewellery salesman whom Harry approaches in a moment of weakness. Some people work together, or live next to each other but there isn’t much connective tissue except the overarching theme of romance and the upcoming Christmas holiday. The point is, no one in this whopper feels essential, which makes the bad stories feel worse. Colin and his quest to get laid is so awful you’re a little embarrassed for everyone involved. I kept waiting for it to spring a twist upon us but no, it plays out exactly like some fantasy a 14-year-old Brit would dream up. Nearly as terrible is the tale of Juliet, Mark and Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor). I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If you've been harbouring romantic feelings for years, haven’t told the person how you feel and you just watch from the sidelines, lubricating yourself with your own tears at night, you’re not sweet. You’re a creep. It’s extra awkward that Peter plays no part in this story.

Most of the other tales are charming. Daniel working through his own grief by teaching his son about life is a highlight, as are the stories featuring Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. They both have that everyman kind of charm which makes you cheer for them and have terrific chemistry with their respective love interests. I’ll even add Bill Nighy’s segment on the “Nice List”. The rest are ok but severely hampered by the number of people and plot lines we’re supposed to keep track of. Sometimes, actors and actresses are gone for so long it takes you a moment to remember what role they play in this “epic”. When a link between the stories is revealed, you’re unsure if this is new information or something you just forgot about. There’s simply too much going on. No one gets properly fleshed, leaving your mind to fill in the gaps. Luckily for you, familiarity endears you to these people because you’ve seen these scenarios a thousand times before.

As “The Ultimate Romantic Comedy”, Love Actually leaves much to be desired. The ultimate rom-com should be universal. It should contain at least one character that isn’t young, white and attractive in a major role. How about a same-sex relationship too? Maybe that was too much to ask in 2003. What should’ve been apparent - even back then - was how overstuffed with clichés this ordeal is. Every sweet love story and appealing actor is eventually shoved aside to make room for another you like much less… making this a constant back-and-forth between satisfaction and disappointment. (On DVD, December 21, 2019)

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Star Vs: Stump Day Review or The Why Are You Booing Tom He’s Right Holiday Special

Before we start a special credit to @jess-the-vampire who I discussed the episode with during the writing process and brought up a LOT of good points that ended up going into this review. She clearly hates it as much as I do and had even more good reasons for it. Happy Hanukah, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Everybody! And today we got a big, fat, grotesque lump of coal to smash to pieces. And after a long, draining, if worth the effort scrooge review, and with this being something I needed to cross off my to do list this holiday season, I put this one here as I could use the cathariss of giving this steaming bowl of elephant piss a good thrashing. As you can tell unlike my usual reviews, I do not like this episode. This isn’t the FIRST i’ve not liked i’ve covered, but it is the first rather infamous one to me i’ve covered and not just a dead possum of an episode I ran into while reguarly covering an otherwise good show like “Quaraller’s Pass” or “Strife of the Party”. This one’s had it coming, making my top 8 worst christmas specials list last year, and while not the series worst outing, that’s a toss up between the finale and marco jr, it’s easily one of them. So while usually I like diving deeply into something good and picking apart while it’s good, if not ignoring any bad aspects, here i’m just going to take a hammer to this thing to explain why it dosen’t work and why it sucks dirty ass in thunderstorms. I might be overstating it a bit but probably not. Nothing really new has happened since the last episode so the only new thing to cover is why i’m doing the episode here instead of after Monster Bash. And the simple reason is that like the Ducktales Halloween and Christmas specials, this episode clearly does not take place in the same time frame of the episode before or after it, with the next episode, The Bog Beast of Bogabah, taking place the day after Monster Bash. It’s most likely they simply held this episode over till Christmas and it dosen’t really fit in AFTER the huge game changer that is monster bash, especailly since the next three episodes after this all take place in rapid sucession, two on the same day one the day after them. So yeah i’m doing this one first and putting it ahead of monster bash on my episode guide for clarity’s sake.

Good, so with all that settled, let’s unwrap this complete works of pauly shore shall we? We open on the titular Stump Day, essentially mewni’s christmas complete with Cocoa, carols and a gay couple and their equally adorable child. And Star, unsuprisingly is giddy for it as the actual chlidren, and wearing an adorable santaesque dress complete with horns on her santa hat. Seriously you cannot tell me tom didn’t get that for her. Fucking precious. Marco is more just confused and has his hood up and one of Star’s cousins asks uncle river to tell him the origin of stump day. River’s response.. is easily the best joke of the episode.

“(in a jolly tone) ha ha, you don’t tell me what to do”

He does so anyway though: Basically when settlers arrived on Mewni they found themselves cold and griping with each other, and soon found a blizzard had struck.. but by huddling together under a magic stump, they all learned to get along or something like that and now once a year everyone gathers in warmth and camraderie.. or else. Before Marco can understandably question what “or else” means in this context, Star butts in when one of her cousins chastises the younger one who asked river the question for beliviing and says he’s real. It’s a nice touch as it fits star perfectly to still belivie in mewni’s horrifying version of santa. I forgot just how adorable and likeable the character was before the final season shot that to hell. How her energy could be infectious and how Eden Sher really brought her all to the performance, which is still the performance of her career and hopefully like Rider Strong she’ll do more voice acting eventually. So that night as Star tucks in after wonderful night of sleep, and to avoid her dad’s usual drunken chorus of Tom Jones “Sex Bomb”, and gets woken up by Marco who leads her to the dining hall because a windows broken to fix it with magic. Star entirely buys this flimsy story.. but as Jess pointed out, and as I missed hence the credit up top... she dosen’t bring her wand. She.. dosen’t bring her wand.. to go fix something with magic. Now i’ll grant next season shows she CAN fully do magic without it, and while not as powerful like her mom still has plenty of punch behind it.. especially when she does the rainbow fist thing. But it’s still.. weird she dosen’t think to grab it and feels out of character. While Star’s learned by this point not to rely on it, and as we’ll see gives it up entirely, one of the few bits of her character development that actually sticks, it still seems resonable she’d take it with her wherever she goes.. and usually SHE DOES. And her jammies, which are also adorable, seem to have pockets so the animators had no reason to not just stuff it in one. It would’ve made their job harder yes.. but then don’t have marco use an excuse that directly requires it then and draws attention to the fact the wand is missing, and the fact you blatantly just hoped we’d forget about it as it’d ruin the climax.

It’s far from the worst thing in this episode..trust me we’re almost there. But this does bring me to a point.. so far the episode is GOOD. The comedy’s good, the setup for what’s about to happen is good, the holdiay setting is warm and inviting but weird enough to perfectly fit mewni, and River, much like his VA and homosexual talking boat portrayer Alan Tudyuk, is a national treasure as always. Whelp it’s all down hill from here bitches! Giddyup.

So Marco announces a SUPRISE PARTY! And everyone’s there: Tom, Kelly, Ponyhead, Starfan14... oh yeah this is the first ep i’ve coverd with Starfan14 isn’t it? Starfan14 is star’s insane fangirl, voiced by series creator Derfron Nercy herself, who star happily tolerates despite clearly wanting to wear her skin. We’ve all been there. Also Jackie is transparently missing, though at least it’s SOMEWHAT reasonable as she and marco broke up a few .. months ago? I mean it is winter on mewni for this episode but the end of season 4 and the series is set at the start of summer, yet months still pass.....

Confusing timeline aside, Jackie has every reason not to attend a party thrown by her ex for the girl who confesed she had feelings for said ex and it’s probably the only good decision Marco makes this entire episode that he wisely decided to give Jackie some space. And it says something a decision made entirely off screen that was probably because the creators genuinely forgot Jackie once she was out of the way so they could shift the love triangle stuff to Tom, Star and Marco instead of you know.. not doing that because most love triangles are annoying at best and utterly insufferable at worst. Case in point this episode but I can give out more about this aspect of things in a bit with more context.

And to his credit, and as Jess backed me up on, Marco’s gesture is genuinely throughtful.. at least to start with. He got her a choclate fountain, brought all of her friends, and geninely just thought Star never celebrated her birthday on her birthday because it was you know the same day as christmas. As someone whose birthday is a week before christmas, December 16th if you were curious, I understand the pain of having your birthday in the same month as christmas. Of having all your presents clustered at once and of having to manuver around a very stressful season, though it does sometimes have perks like getting to celebrate your birthday and christmas, it also means your birthday is secondary and always will be to most people due to proximity. And Star has hers ON mewman christmas, so it’s even worse. So from Marco’s perspective, TO START, his best friend constantly had to share her birthday with her faviorite holiday and just wanted to do something nice. SO FAR, he’s done nothing wrong and just means well. That’s... about to end. Star.. instead of being greatful.. starts muttering no before going on an manic rampage and destroying everything including hte band’s insturments. And apparnetly star’s gotten some flack for her behavior.. but I understand it. To her the stump is VERY real, and will be very angry if someone else celebrates so to her all she’s doing is saving her best friend from the holiday equilvent of the trees from evil dead, and when Marco asks about it she GENUINELY is sorry, getting he meant well, that he was being sweet, and that he did a lot of nice stuff for her.. she just can’t celebrate not because she loves the holiday but because again, from her persepctive, the stump will kill them all if they don’t support it. She is genuinly affraid for her friends lives and given she could go grab her wand and fight it, clearly thinks she, with all her CONSIDERABLE powers, cannot win this, and neither can tom whose powers are almost entirely fire based. Star is just trying to protect her friends from being horribly murdered. And she turns out to be entirely right about it so no, star was not a jerk here. A bit over the top, but she was not insensitive, she was not mean, she just didn’t want a party for understandable reasons.

So let’s get to actually insensitive shall we?! Marco’s reaction to this is at first confusion as he didn’t realize the stump was real, though Tom, Kelly and Pony are convinced it’s not. Also this episode implies Kelly is from mewni, but she turns out not to be so why she knows about the stump I genuinely don’t know. They think it’s just a baby thing.. though in Tom’s defense he dosen’t phrase it that way, thinks star still beliving is cute, which for a teenage boy finding out his girlfriend belivies in santa is very sweet and mature of him, and is trying to be nice about it even if he doesn’t believe. But Marco.. his response to his friend having a good reason for not wanting to have the party.. is to complain about how much effort he put into it and try to guilt and bribe her into having it by mentoining he got her faviorite cake flavor, rainbow. Just.. WOW. I’ve seen some bad turns from characters, but WOWWWWWW. Holy shit.. I mean at least other jerkass marco episodes before this had SOME reasoning to them. Sophmore Slump had him clearly sublimating his feelings for star combined with the usual obnoxiousness of someone having gone abroard for the first time, which as Letterkenny recently went into, the only thing worse is Stillborn Puppies. Nothing else.

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And with Lint Catcher while he was presumptive and not blameless.. river still outright lied to him. Here? It’s clear star dosen’t want this, cake can be refigirated, he only takes a loss on the choclate fountain and he could still just let everyone have some and say it’s for stump day to appease her. He dosen’t have to take a loss on this finacially or morally and there would be no harm done. But that’s.. not what HE wanted, not waht HE set up and he wants what HE wanted, which was to impress star with a thoughtful gesture. But that’s the thing bud: Gestures aren’t about you or what you get. Their about doint something nice for another fucking person. It’s the whole point of christmas and birthdays: To just give someone something to be ncie and to celebrate the day and them respectively. If she dosen’t WANT your gift for understandable reasons and isn’t being rude about it you don’t have any leg to stand on you seflish twatwaffle.

So already Marco is not coming off well.. and if you know this episode you know it gets worse. Oh god it gets worse. So first PONYHEAD of all people calls out Marco.. and for once, PONYHEAD, the most selfish, most unresonable and a character whose tolerablity varies on the episode, tells him he’s being selfish and is only pressing on because of his need to control things. So not only is Ponyhead right but the episode LIKELY wants you to feel she’s wrong because she’s pony which is not how this work as she knows star well and thus, while unaware she still belivied in the stump, which tracks as while it’s obvious she does Pony is so up her own whatever she has that functions as an ass, it’s understandable she’d miss some details. So no Pony’s right, and the fact PONY is one of the more resonable people in this episode is both a sign of the apocalypse, which is thankfully starting to recede, and a clear marker of just how bad Marco’s being if someone who torments him and disagrees with him out of principal is entirely right.

Oh but it gets worse as next up, Tom steps in and tries to get Marco to back out, admitting he told him this was a bad idea. Now granted Tom did mess up by not stepping in to stop this a bit.. but he A) didn’t know how much his girlfriend genuinely belivied in the stump and B) Probably assumed Marco meant well, as would I before he whined about not getting his way, and decided it was worth a try. So he’s not that bad, and while it is a bit ehhh to try and take back credit for this when he participated, it’s still minor and Marco is still being a huge dick who refuses to help shut things down when it’s clear the party is only causing star to have a panic attack and assault some humble marachi players. He sees nothing good is coming from this and just wants what star wants. Also it paints Marco in a worse light as he was warned about this, and was so obssed with making it a suprise party because that’s how his plan went, he refused to just.. talk to her about it. Hell he could’ve just casually asked “Why do you never celebrate your birthday on your birthday”. It’s an easy question, dosen’t give the game away and allows him to gage if this is a good idea or not BEFORE baking a cake , hiring a band and getting a chocolate fountain. Instead he just went ahead with it. And he did so.. because this ISN’T about making Star happy. This is abotu HIM making star happy. Him showing her how thoughtful, and considerate and sweet he is and how he’s always been there for her and how maybe she should be with him instead of Tom. I mean it just comes off that way.. he made it a suprise party because in his head that’s how it worked and she was super impresed and left tom that day to be with him in some elaborate fantasy. Granted the episode dosen’t say this.. but it sure as hell acccidently implies hte hell out of it by having marco act like a selfish ass who refuses to take what STAR wants into consideration, and just wants to get his fantasy back on track. What supports this to me is how he treats tom, you know one of his best friends: He, again, accuses him of forgetting.. then calls him a bad boyfriend.. a bad boyfriend for NOT wanting to force a celebration on his girlfriend she does not want, and for not forcing it on her. For you know GROWING AS A PERSON. Beacuse here’s the pickle pumpernickle: This thing Marco’s doing? Is exactly the kind of thing a pre-character development TOM did, that was rightfully framed as bad. Being controlling, wanting things to go JUST a certain way instead of letting them flow naturally, not getting the hint star isn’t intrested, and not caring about what she wants and only what you want. Marco is doing the same thing Tom used to do. And for starters i’ts already bad because you know MARCO WAS THE ONE WHO FINALLY GOT IT THROUGH TO TOM THAT THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOR WAS TOXIC AND SELFISH. But apparently when it’s Marco himself doing it it’s fine. If there was ever any clear evidence Marco regressed as a character, there it is. Him actively unelarning a lesson he taught someone else and then getting combative when that person rightly tries to call him out. Marco is just insufferable in this episode: He’s being selfish, creepy and posseive and he’s apparenlty supposed to, at least on some level BE RIGHT. But.. we will get to that. Consider a pin put in this rant.

So Tom overreacts, and throws some fire at marco, which is genuinely wrong and Kelly’s right to call him out, and then headlocks him asking marco to say he’s a good boyfriend. Marco screams out ‘NEVVVEEEERRRR”

I just made this, by hapinstance, while watching the video I put up there. I.. I did not think i’d get to use this so soon but my god. Just my god that’s a terrible thing to say. So the party soon breaks down elsewhere as Kelly is mad at tom for.. understandable reasons again the guy she has a crush on was just nearly set on fire, even if i’m still on Tom’s side overall here, it’s still not right. Janna points out it’s probably because she has a crush on marco, which while acurate dosen’t mean she was wrong and Tad pops out to be upset about that. Even though you know you two are broken up and as Kelly points out he needs to move out. Pony is mad she’s not getting any attention and Starfan is mad because star’s mad. Star results to desperate measures, opening the windows to try and repeate the act of the settlers. She didn’t however count on the Janna factor as she throws the stump in the fire, which is in chracter. What’s not, and again I give Jess full credit for this one, is that everyone just starts.. warming around the stump and not caring like a bunch of jackasses not caring about their close friend, and in tom’s case, girlfriend’s feelings. Also tom and marco apparently stopped fighting just to be this stupid.

But naturally burning the symbolic stump is a bad idea and the real one attacks. Protip: If you live in a world of magical nonsense, maybe don’t discount the magic stump. Everyone’s captured, including moon and river, with River also being suprised and replying to Star’s annoyance at him not beliving with “Sweetie it’s a stump!”. Alan Tudyk is a god and I feel you all should acknowleddge that. But yeah everything seemsm to be bad but everyone apologizes, if not for the right things in Marco’s case, and Tom says “I’m sorry i’m a bad boyfriend!”. You .. you aren’t. You did nothing wrong. I feel like this is tom for the last agrivating 6 minutes of the episode

He did SOME THINGS wrong but he is NOT a bad boyfriend. He is throughtful, kind and while he has flaws, SO DOES STAR. He is not a bad boyfriend for not wanting to repeat past abusive actions! GAH. Let’s just get on with it. They all hold hands, they thiunk this is what made the stump go away but Star is sure it was just going to kill them, Moon and River have a thousand yard stare as they realize they both have to get repairs for this room now and do an extra big stump day next year to make sure it dosen’t come back. And Marco apologizes to star.. for not beliving her. Not for forcing this on her, not for causing all of this, not at all to tom, but for not beliving her while star FUCKING APOLOGIZES TO HIM. Pin removed, bullshit falling to the floor... Trunks if you would.

Thank you. Star DID NOTHING WRONG. Tom DID LESS WRONG THAN MARCO. WHY ARE THEY APOLOGIZING. Why is this little shithead getting everything he wants as the party happens after all, if a day later, and he gets to dance with star, while everyone else is painted as being in the wrong? That’s what makes this special so putrid: that MARCO is apparently in the right for doing the same , if on a smaller scale, manipulative shit tom used to do before he grew as a person, yet the episode sides with him, props him up and teases Starco. If it’s Starco it’s okay apparently and that’s.. not okay. You can’t .. build a ship on a character acting like a jackass. That’s not how this works. Marco was wrong, he was bad and he should FEEL bad. Instead he’s just a creepy jerk this entire episode, being entitled, manipulating star, screaming at tom.. and gets REWARDED FOR IT. Fuck this episode.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I believe I said Fuck this episode. This is easily one of star vs’ worst episode and much like the season after this episode it gets worse the more you think about it. I put it on my worst holiday episodes list for a reason.. and frankly even with the decent first 4 mintues it should be higher. It’s an unplesant mess that throughly ruins Marco’s character and takes him from a kind, upstanding, polite and bright young man to a creepy manpiulative jackasss. Fuck this episode and have a happy holidays.

#Star Vs the Forces of Evil #star butterfly #marco diaz #Tom lucitor #tomstar #starco #kelly #lilica ponyhead #starfan14 #christmas #holidays #holiday #stump day #bad episodes #reviews #animation

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thegayhimbo · 3 years

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Instances where Bill Compton has committed Rape/Sexual Assault:

The Southern Vampire Mystery Books:

1.) The Graveyard Scene in Dead Until Dark (Book 1). In the book, it’s mentioned that Bill is angry over the deaths of the Monroe Vampires, and grabs Sookie to force her to have sex with him. During this time, Sookie describes how scared she is of Bill because of his rage, and feels like she’s unable to struggle against him because she’s afraid that he will hurt her and kill her if she resists. If a woman is unable to say “No” to sex and feels like she has to go along with it because she’s scared that the other person might hurt her if she refuses, that automatically makes it rape. Her orgasming during the act is irrelevant. Orgasming is a physical sensation, and there are instances where male and female rape victims have orgasmed when they’ve been raped. It doesn’t change the fact that what Bill did to Sookie in this scene is still rape.

2.) Probably the most infamous example is the rape scene in Club Dead (book 3). In the book, Sookie gets locked in the back of a truck with Bill by Debbie. Bill proceeds to attack Sookie, feed on her, and then rape her.

TRIGGER WARNING AHEAD! This is the rape scene in all of its gruesome detail:

“His voice sounded rough, his throat was sore. He had stopped taking blood. Now another need was on him, one closely related to feeding. His hands pulled down my sweatpants and after a lot of fumbling and rearranging and contorting HE ENTERED ME with no preparation at all. I screamed and he clapped a hand over my mouth. I was crying, sobbing, and my nose was all stopped up and I needed to breathe through my mouth” (SVM, Book 3)

There’s always been a debate about this scene over how much control Bill had in this instance, especially since he had been tortured by Lorena and was suppose to be “out of it” when he raped Sookie. I have always found this to be questionable, especially because of how the scene is written and how we only sees this from Sookie’s POV. Personally, I believe he had a lot more control in this situation than initially believed, especially with the whole “fumbling and rearranging and contorting,” which gives the impression that he had to have some idea of what he was doing but just didn’t care because it was all about his needs in that moment. I think what’s damning about this scene is that it isn’t just Bill raping Sookie while mindlessly feeding on her; it’s that he was done feeding from her and took the time to pull off her clothes, rearrange her body so it was in line with his, and then put his hand over her mouth to prevent her from screaming while he raped her. This gives the impression there was some cognitive awareness from Bill in what he was doing, which is why I question if he was truly “out of it.” Maybe this isn’t how Charlaine Harris intended this scene to come across, but that’s what I ended up taking away from this.

What makes this worse is that the later books try to retcon this by claiming it was “attempted rape” or “near rape” which................NO, it wasn’t. There is no way to read this scene in the book and not see it as a rape scene. I don’t know why Harris tried to do this, but regardless of her reasoning, it was not okay. She chose to go this direction with Bill, and she doesn’t get to backtrack on this just because she likes Bill’s character and doesn’t want him to be seen as a rapist.

3.) There’s also the revelation in Club Dead that Bill intended to pension off Sookie so he could be with Lorena. Even if this didn’t actually happen the way Bill wanted it to, it’s still disgusting that he would try to do this AND that he would keep it from Sookie.

TV Show:

1.) During the 70 years Bill spent with Lorena, both of them raped, tortured, drained, and killed women and men in the most sadistic and gruesome way possible. From the flashbacks we get of their disgusting exploits:

a.) In season 5, there's a flashback where Bill and Lorena are at Pam's brothel and Bill is biting in-between a proustite's legs while Lorena glamours the poor woman to say degrading things like calling Bill "Daddy" in a sexual manner. What Bill did here constitutes rape. And before you start telling me he was feeding from her, a.) He could have bitten her anywhere else (like on her arm or neck) and he specifically chose to bite her in that area, and b.) Regardless of whether or not he was feeding from her, it's still rape because she was not able to give consent in that situation. If I ever put my mouth in-between a woman's legs and bit her without her consent, my actions would be labeled as rape. This is no different with Bill, and it’s all but stated this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this.

b.) The Chicago couple in the 1926 flashback in season 2. Both Bill and Lorena tortured this couple, sadistically taunted them, bit and fed on the couple without their consent, forced both victims to watch each other suffer, stripped them of most of their clothes as a way to sexually humiliate them, and reveled in their suffering while getting sexually aroused by it. In one scene, Bill comes from a different room to meet up with Lorena while dragging the male victim inside with him. Bill has no pants on during this scene, and the implication is that Bill raped the guy off-screen.

2.) In season 3, it’s revealed that Bill has been employed as Queen Sophie Anne’s procurer for 35 years (starting as far back as 1974). Procurer by definition is someone who obtains another person as a prostitute for a client, which means that Bill was obtaining humans (either through kidnapping or glamouring) to be taken to Sophie Anne to be fed on, raped, paraded around as her pets, turned into vampires if she desired, or else disposed of once she was done with them. What he did here amounts to forced prostitution at best and human trafficking at worst. And in the case of Sophie Anne, I say rape because she was in a position of power over the humans procured for her as both a vampire and the Queen of Louisiana. These humans were not in a position to say no to her if she demanded sex from them, and there’s also the question of whether or not she used glamouring or V to keep them docile to her. Everything about this situation was disgusting and disturbing.

3.) In season 1, after the deaths of Malcom, Liam, and Diane, Sookie goes out to the graveyard and Bill (who is buried in the ground) grabs Sookie by her leg with the intent of forcing himself on her. This was described by Stephen Moyer (the actor who plays Bill Compton) in a 2009 interview as a rape scene:

“But when do you know it’s OK to crawl out of the mud and rape her [as Bill does in one scene]… ”

--Stephen Moyer in a 2009 interview with Nylon Magazine (the answer is a bit cut from the original)

The scene becomes even more disgusting when you remember how Bill got into this relationship with Sookie in the first place: He had been sent by Queen Sophie Anne to procure Sookie because of what she might have been (aka a faerie). To this end, he stood by and allowed the Rattarays to beat the shit out of Sookie (to the point she was puking up blood) so he could pretend to be a hero by “rescuing her” from them and then drug her with his blood. Said blood was both a tracking device, a drug, and a powerful aphrodisiac that was used to manipulate Sookie into falling in love with him. To make matters worse, while Bill did tell her that her libido might be enhanced, he did not tell her that the blood would make her sexually attracted to him. Bill then used this to take advantage of her grief over Gran’s death to get into her pants, and Sookie was still under the influence of his blood when Bill tried to force himself on her in the graveyard. No matter how you try to spin, that makes the consent in the graveyard dubious at best and non-existent at worst. Bill intended to rape Sookie in that moment.

4.) In season 3, in an attempt to get revenge on Lorena, Bill gets on the bed with her, violently twists her head 180 degrees, and proceeds to rape Lorena as a way to punish her. This was also described as a rape scene by Stephen Moyer at Paleyfest 2011:

“That particular scene was so.........I was worried about it, probably not for the reason you think. I was worried about it because I......I couldn’t see where Bill was going with that. What was the reason to turn anger into RAPE. And Alan and I talked about it, and I called Alan personally, and we talked about it, and.......it’s the only thing he has over her.”

--Stephen Moyer at Paleyfest 2011

5.) In the season 3 episode “9 Crimes,” Bill is sent to procure a stripper from a bar for Russell, Lorena, and himself to feed on. Bill chooses a woman named Anne who has no family and is depressed and suicidal. Bill glamours Anne into coming with him, and when Russell and Lorena are feeding on Anne, Bill chooses to bite her in the groin. He could have chosen anywhere else on the body, and he chose to bite her in that region. Regardless of whether or not he was feeding from her, what he did here constitutes sexual assault/rape.

6.) In season 5, Bill (along with Salome and the other Chancellors at the Authority) sanction a human trafficking ring where humans are kept naked in cells to be fed on, raped, and disposed of. It doesn’t take a genius to understand why the humans were naked, and it’s specifically mentioned by Roman that the Sanguinistas (which Bill and the other Chancellors were a part of) believe in the torture, slavery, and rape of humans.

7.) In season 5, when Bill and the other Authority members attack the patrons at the bar and start slaughtering everyone, there's a brief moment where Bill is on top of a woman biting and sucking from her breast. Even if he was feeding from her, what he does here constitutes sexual assault.

It’s always been stunning to me that fans (especially of the TV show) are in denial about Bill being a rapist, and either go out of their way to deny it or else double-down on it. All of the examples I’ve listed above are instances of Bill committing rape, sexual assault, or human trafficking. All of them are instances where Bill did NOT care about boundaries or how his actions were hurting other people.

The most infuriating part of this is Bill is rarely called out for his behavior. Instead, the books and the show try to deflect responsibility from Bill by placing the blame on someone or something so he doesn’t have to be held accountable for his actions, or they actively downplay/retcon the severity of Bill being a rapist.

Bill Compton is a walking embodiment of rape culture, and a prime example of how our society continues to make excuses for abusive men.

#true blood #the southern vampire mysteries #charlaine harris #bill compton #anti bill compton #anti bookie #sophie anne leclerq #sookie stackhouse #stephen moyer

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senorarelojes · 4 years

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Fic: Happiest Girl (Part 8)

Alan makes a bet that Dave would not be able to pass off as a woman in ladies’ clothing. Dave decides to prove him wrong. (This is set sometime during the Black Celebration era.)

Pairing: Dave/Alan Rating: Explicit Notes: Thank you @pinksyndication, @what-could-have-been and @im-knocking-on-deaths-door for generally being wonderful. :)

First part is here. Second part is here. Third part is here. Fourth part is here. Fifth part is here. Sixth part is here. Seventh part is here.

When Alan came back with the drinks, his expression had reverted to that polite, distant look Dave knew he only employed whenever he was suffering through a photoshoot or interview and he would much rather be someplace else. He handed Dave a glass of house red, avoiding Dave’s eyes as he sipped his own vodka tonic. Earlier his lips had been smudged with traces of Dave’s lipstick, but he must have wiped it all off at the bar with a napkin or something. Dave had no idea why he felt a ridiculous pang of loss at this thought.

Dave himself had to take a moment to make sense of what had just happened, his head spinning in confusion. Alan had barely hesitated when Dave had asked him for the kiss, and it had felt shockingly real and intimate, Alan’s lips warm and firm against his own. In fact, Dave wanted to do it again and again, tonguing the curve of Alan’s lower lip before tugging it down with his teeth and sucking on it, just to hear Alan gasp into his mouth. He wanted to back Alan up against the wall and just...plunder his mouth.

Then Dave felt like an utter idiot.

Why couldn’t he? The fact that Alan had willingly kissed him, with so little persuasion, meant that Alan was definitely on board with whatever was going on between them. Hence Dave had to act quickly, before Alan further retreated behind his usual mask of polite indifference.

Dave took Alan’s drink from him and set it down, then gripped his puzzled friend’s arm. “Come with me,” he said loudly, tilting his head towards the back exit.

“Our drinks--” Alan protested.

“For fuck’s sake, Al, I’ll get us new ones. C’mon.” Dave did his best to look cross, although with his current disguise, he might have just ended up looking more pouty than angry. Judging from the way Alan’s mouth was twitching in amusement, that was most probably the case.

Dave dragged him to where the lavatories were, looking for the door further down that led to the fire exit. A bored-looking bouncer was guarding the door, but he only raised an eyebrow as Dave flashed him a sweet smile before pushing the door open. The bloke didn’t stop him; he must have assumed that Dave and Alan were going outside to find a nearby alley for a quick shag.

There were some staff sitting outside the back exit on upturned beer crates, smoking viciously and complaining in German. Dave just dragged a confused Alan past them, further down another side alley behind a closed restaurant where it was quieter and darker. At least they were alone here. Thankfully, the night was still warm enough for them to stand outside without jackets.

Leaning against the wall, Alan arched an eyebrow at Dave. “What’s going on?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest. Alan had such nice arms; Dave privately thanked the inventor of sleeveless button-downs for their contribution to society.

Dave stepped forward, closing the distance between him and a suddenly wary Alan. “I wanted you to kiss me earlier,” Dave said bluntly, placing a hand on either side of Alan to trap him against the wall.

Alan’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “Yeah I know, you asked me to,” he said a little sullenly. “Because of Mart and Fletch.”

Dave shook his head, holding Alan’s gaze. “No mate, you’re not listening. I wanted you to kiss me. Even before Mart and Andy came along.”

He could see the exact moment everything clicked in Alan’s head, his eyes widening in realisation. “Oh,” Alan said, licking his lips and leaving them moist. Now his breathing was a little harsher, his gaze dropping to Dave’s mouth.

Dave took his own sweet time to study Alan’s face. Alan had very soft, plush lips for a man, and now that Dave knew what they tasted and felt like, one couldn’t blame him for getting addicted. Suddenly Dave was driven with the possessive need to leave his lipstick smudged all over Alan’s mouth again.

“Idiot,” Dave said fondly, before leaning in and capturing Alan’s lips in a kiss far deeper than the one they’d shared in the club.

In turn, Alan was reaching under Dave’s curls and wrapping a hand around the back of his neck to drag him closer, their bodies pressed together from chest to hip. Dave moaned into the kiss, raking his fingers through Alan’s gelled hair and tightening his grip on it just to hear Alan gasp. He laughed when Alan did just that, nipping at Alan’s half-open mouth so he could start sucking on the tip of Alan’s tongue. Fuck, Alan tasted wonderful.

They continued trading kisses that were increasingly getting filthier and dirtier, to the point where Dave was harder than he could ever remember being. He inexplicably wanted to spread his legs and guide Alan's hand there, the smooth, slinky fabric of the dress making him feel especially indecent, like he wanted Alan’s long elegant fingers to lift his skirt, to rip it off him entirely.

Alan was the first to pull away for breath, licking Dave’s lipstick off his teeth. His hair was mussed, the grey-blue of his irises now merely a thin ring around his blown pupils. He looked wild and dangerous and debauched, like he was a step away from tossing Dave over his shoulder and dragging him back to the hotel to finish what all those kisses had promised.

“All right?” a panting Dave asked, cupping Alan’s face. Alan only nodded, reaching out to brush Dave’s curls away from his face. He had that impassive look on his face again that he was so good at hiding behind, but there was no dimming the brightness of his eyes.

“C’mon, let’s go back to the club for another drink, then we’ll take a taxi to the hotel.” Alan was still combing his fingers through the waves of Dave’s hair. “Think you’ve won the bet, fair and square.”

Dave’s eyes widened in alarm. “What? Right now?”

“Yeah, why not?” a confused Alan asked.

"I've got a problem, alright?" Dave hissed, jerking his head downwards. "Once people see this, I'm not winning any bloody bets."

Alan followed his gaze. "Oh. Okay, don't worry. We'll just wait here until your, er, problem goes away."

But it didn't go away, as the main cause of the problem - Alan - was standing so close to him, his warm palm tracing the curve of Dave’s spine. Dave took a deep breath to calm himself, but all he got was a whiff of Alan's cologne and scent, which made the issue even worse.

"Sorry, mate." Dave tried to keep his tone nonchalant, even though his cheeks were burning with embarrassment. "It's just been a while since--"

"No, I understand," Alan said. For some reason he didn't seem put off or disgusted with the situation. In fact, he was leaning in closer, his hip pressing against Dave's thigh. He was probably trying to be a good friend and calm Dave's 'problem', but it had the opposite effect, causing all the remaining blood in Dave's body to rush south, fuelling his erection even more. Dave buried his face in Alan's neck, smelling his skin with a soft groan. He was so hard he felt like he was going to explode any minute.

"There's another way to get rid of your, er, situation," he heard Alan say softly.

Dave lifted his head to stare at Alan. "Are you suggesting I go have a wank in the bathroom?" he blurted out.

Alan laughed. "Well no, not necessarily." Then he shifted his hips so that they were pressed together from chest to pelvis, and Dave let out a small gasp when he felt Alan's own erection digging into his thigh.

Dave didn't quite know how to process this whole new situation. It was one thing to drunkenly snog your best mate (even though Dave wasn't really that drunk) and feel him up, but it was quite another to have undeniable proof of just how much he had turned Alan on. Dave had never touched another bloke like this in his life, and he was sure Alan hadn't either. But anyone with a basic knowledge of sex and biology would know how to make a persistent erection go away.

The thought of it - the prospect of touching such an intimate part of Alan for real - both scared and thrilled Dave. "Liked the sight of me in a dress a little bit too much, did you?" Dave said with a breathless laugh, content to take refuge in humour as he always did.

Alan cleared his throat. "I haven't been able to stop looking all evening," he admitted, eyes travelling down Dave's body.

#fanfic #happiest girl #crossdressing #lingerie

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nitrateglow · 4 years

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Favorite film discoveries of 2019

Every year, my new-to-me favorites list always shocks me in some way. This year, the sheer amount of movies made in the 2010s on display is INSANE by my standards. Of course, most of the modern movies here are throwbacks or tributes to older styles of cinema, so maybe it’s not that shocking in the long run.

Another running trend this year: movies that are old but not as dated as we would wish. Many of the older films here deal with xenophobia and political strife in ways that still feel shockingly prescient today-- the more things change...

ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD (DIR. QUENTIN TARANTINO, 2019)

I never thought the day would come where my favorite movie of the year would actually be made after the 1970s, let alone by Quentin Tarantino. Then again, this movie is all about the end of Old Hollywood as well as a big love letter to the 1960s, so maybe it’s not that shocking a state of affairs. I adored this movie, the level of detail, the laidback yet elegaic vibe, the comedy and the relationships between all the characters. It was one of those movies where I loved even the scenes where nothing seems to be happening at all-- I mean, who knew Brad Pitt feeding his dog and watching TV could be entertaining?? But it is and I can't wait to see this one again!

INTENTIONS OF MURDER (DIR. SHOHEI IMAMURA, 1964)

Intentions of Murder has an insane premise, one that runs the risk of being tasteless: a housewife in a miserable, exploitative marriage is raped by a sickly burglar during a home invasion. Even worse, she can’t shake him, as he’s suddenly infatuated and wants her to run away with him to the city. And weirder still: her current existence is so miserable that she’s TEMPTED. While abuse and rape are grim subjects for any story, Intentions is actually about a woman coming into her own and finally standing strong against all these men trying to use her. It’s a weird blend of drama and dark comedy, a truly savage satire on patriarchy and class-snobbery.

JOKER (DIR. TODD PHILLIPS, 2019)

I went into this movie expecting to think it was overhyped and when I first left the theater, I was all ready to say “it’s good but not THAT good.” But it ended up haunting me for weeks afterward, and I found myself thinking about how everything just tied up so well together, from the grotty urban hellscape which serves as the setting to Phoenix’s brilliant performance. It reminded me a lot of A Clockwork Orange in how intimate it lets you get to this violent man while never pretending he is someone to be glamorized or imitated.

SIMON (DIR. MARSHALL BRICKMAN, 1980)

How do I even describe Simon? Alan Arkin is brainwashed by a group of overpaid intellectuals into believing he is descended from an alien toaster. Then he gets a messiah complex and starts gathering disciples as he rails against television, condiment packets, and muzak. It’s a little uneven at times, sure, but the satire is really inspired. The whole thing is like a combination of Mel Brooks, Stanley Kubrick, and Woody Allen’s styles, and it is quite hilarious for those who thrive on cult oddities.

PEEPING TOM (DIR. MICHAEL POWELL, 1960)

Though it came out the same year as Hitchcock’s Psycho and has been nearly as influential for horror cinema, Peeping Tom remains underseen by everyone save for film theorists. And what a shame that is, because this movie is more frightening than Psycho. Sure, that may be because Psycho is so predominant in popular culture and just so influential that it no longer has the same shock value, but there’s something about Peeping Tom that gets under my skin, something sad, even disgusting. I felt dirty after watching it-- and this is 2019!

MIDNIGHT MARY (DIR. WILLIAM WELLMAN, 1933)

Loretta Young got one of her juiciest roles in this pre-code crime drama. Her Mary Martin is more than just a good girl forced into criminal circles-- she’s a complicated creature, compassionate and desperate and lonely and bitter and sensual all at once. This movie is a fast-paced, beautifully filmed ride, cloaked in that Depression-era cynicism that makes pre-code Hollywood of such interest to movie geeks the world over.

WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD (DIR. WILLIAM WELLMAN, 1933)

Wild Boys of the Road is a quintessential Depression-era movie, relentless in its bleakness and rage. That the main characters are all starving kids only looking for work makes their struggles all the harder to watch. William Wellman is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors: his gritty style and compact storytelling are just perfect for a ripped-from-the-headlines drama such as this. And the “happy” ending has one little moment that just knocks any smile you have right off your mug. Absolutely see this.

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING (DIR. NORMAN JEWISON, 1966)

Sometimes, when you watch a movie only because a favorite actor is in it, you get subjected to pure trash like Free and Easy (oh, the things I do for Buster Keaton). Other times, you get cute gems like The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, which, as you probably guessed, I mainly sought out for Alan Arkin. But the whole movie is hilarious, the best kind of farce comedy, populated by enjoyable characters and a sweet-tempered humanism that grounds the wackiness. While a little overlong, this movie is quite underrated-- and sadly, its satire of American xenophobia and Cold War panic is not as dated as we would like to believe.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (DIR. ALAN J. PAKULA, 1976)

Who knew a political thriller where most people know the twist could be so intense and riveting? It’s about as nonsensical as feeling suspense when you watch a movie about the Titanic and hope the boat won’t sink-- but damn, it’s magical. All the President’s Men is real white-knuckle stuff, with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman projecting both youthful excitement and deep panic as they proceed with their investigation. It scarcely seems to have aged at all.

WHISPER OF THE HEART (DIR. YOSHIFUMI KONDOU, 1995)

There’s a scene near the end of Whisper of the Heart where the protagonist Shizuku shows the finished first draft of her fantasy novel to her first reader, the grandpa of one of her schoolmates. She weeps because it isn’t the perfect image she had in her head, despite how hard she worked on it, but the old man tells her that it takes polishing and discipline to make the work come to its full potential. Few movies about artists are so honest about how hard it can be, how unsupportive others can be in their demand that everyone be “practical.” As a writer who struggles to create and constantly doubts herself, this movie spoke strongly to me. I recommend it to any creative person.

THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (DIR. BRIAN DE PALMA, 1976)

I’d been wanting to see this movie since my high school phan days. Holy crap, is it WEIRDER than I could have ever imagined, a true camp masterpiece. I’m shocked it was never tuned into a stage show actually, but then again, we would miss those trippy camera angles and we wouldn’t have Paul Williams as one of the greatest villains of all time.

DUEL (DIR. STEVEN SPIELBERG, 1971)

When people talk about the best movies made in the “Hitchcock without Hitchcock directing” tradition, why is Duel so seldom mentioned? The scene in the cafe, packed with paranoid tension and tense camerawork, alone should qualify it. Duel is most known as the movie which put the young Steven Spielberg on the map. It’s quite different from his later work, grittier and less whimsical for sure. Even the ending seems almost nihilistic, depending on how you view it. But damn, if it isn’t fine filmmaking.

CAROL (DIR. TODD HAYNES, 2015)

This gorgeous throwback to Douglas Sirk melodramas is also one of the best romantic movies I’ve seen in a while. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara have the sweetest, tenderest chemistry-- it was like seeing Lauren Bacall and Audrey Hepburn as love interests in a film. Unlike Sirk, there is little in the way of ripe melodrama here-- everything is underplayed, aching, mature. And I can say this is an adaptation that is better than the source book: it just feels so much warmer.

12 ANGRY MEN (DIR. SIDNEY LUMET, 1957

All I can say is that this was every bit equal to the hype. Common movie wisdom says people sitting and talking in a room is going to be boring on film, but movies like 12 Angry Men prove this is not so when you’ve got an excellently tense atmosphere, an inspired script, and a stable of fine actors to work with. Like The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, this movie has not significantly aged-- much to society’s discredit.

A STAR IS BORN (DIR. GEORGE CUKOR, 1954)

Another movie I went into not expecting to love as much as I did. When movies from the 20s or 30s tended to get remakes in the 1950s, I always find them too garish and big, victims of glossy Cinemascope and overlong runtimes. Compared to the lean 1937 classic original, I expected sheer indulgence from this three-hour remake. Instead, I got my heart torn out all over again-- the longer runtime is used well, fleshing out the characters to a greater degree. Judy Garland and James Mason both give what might be the best efforts of their respective careers, and the satire of the celebrity machine remains as relevant and scathing as ever.

BLANCANIEVES (DIR. PABLO BERGER, 2012)

Oh, it feels like this movie was made for me specifically. It’s shot in gorgeous, expressionistic black-and-white. It’s set in the 1920s. It’s a clever adaptation of a classic fairy tale. It’s as funny and charming as it is bittersweet and macabre. Instead of more superhero movies, can we get more neo-silent movies like this? PLEASE?

THE FAVOURITE (DIR. YORGOS LANTHIMOS, 2018)

I’ve heard The Favourite described as a “bitchy lesbian Shakespeare play,” but this description, while a little true in terms of general tone, does not get to the heart of what makes this film brilliant. More than love or sex, this movie is about power-- particularly the corrupting influence of power. And it corrupts not only morals but love itself. Innocents become Machiavellian schemers. Lovers become sadomasochistic enemies. Good intentions turn to poison. This certainly isn’t a happy movie, but it is moving and, strangely enough, also hilarious. I was reminded of the chilly, satirical world of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon more than once-- and for me, that is not a bad movie to be reminded of.

ON THE WATERFRONT (DIR. ELIA KAZAN, 1954)

Another classic that’s been on my list forever that I was delighted to find worthy of its reputation. It’s a classic tale of redemption and social justice, perfectly acted and shot. While I still prefer A Streetcar Named Desire as far as Kazan is concerned, this might be a better movie in the objective sense. Actually, more than even Brando, Karl Malden is the acting highlight for me-- he plays a priest torn between staying silent or truly speaking for the Gospel by demanding justice for the poor parish he serves. Just brilliant work.

KLUTE (DIR. ALAN J. PAKULA, 1971)

A perfect thriller, just about, and a great example of the “NYC is hell on earth” subgenre of the 1960s and 1970s. Jane Fonda is a revelation: she feels so real, not at all like a starlet trying to seem normal if you know what I mean.

KISS KISS BANG BANG (DIR. SHANE BLACK, 2005)

As far as subversive noir goes, this is the most entertaining. I would put it up there with The Big Lebowski as far as goofy takes on Raymond Chandler are concerned-- I don’t even really know what to make of it, but I laughed my ass off anytime I wasn’t going “WHAT???”

What were your favorite film discoveries in 2019?

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hes-writer · 5 years

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A Cheat IV

How about when y/n is engaged with her boyfriend and how happy she is with her life but harry is still miserable. He misses her so much that he begs her to take him back, like literally begging. He tells her that he’ll do anything bc it hurts him to see her getting married with someone else. But y/n isn’t having any of it so she tells him “you already took my heart for granted and left me broken. But now i finally found my happiness again, you’re going to take that away from me too?”

Summary: Harry cheats, Y/N is happy

Warnings: angst

Word count: 3.6k

“That’s what I hoped and gee thanks, have fun with yours too if you ever get over me,” Harry smirk at her menacingly.

She rolls her eyes, burning from the tears she held back. She remains strong.

“Don’t worry, I will.”

Y/N couldn’t believe how well things have been going for her. In the past eight months after her and Harry’s horrid conclusion to their relationship, Y/N had finally graduated from university after four grueling years of late nights and caffeine coursing through her system. She had gotten a puppy—something that she’d always wanted, but never took the initiative to get one. After tossing her cap in the air during the ceremony with Alan beside her, she was offered a job at a well-known law firm only a few weeks after. Everything is going great.

Not a few days ago, Alan had proposed to her and the engagement ring on her pinky finger was proof of a powering relationship, glimmering against the light of her wooden work desk serving as a backdrop. She smiles to herself, thinking how things finally turned around for her. One of her coworkers passes by, noticing the jewelry adorning her finger and stops to eye her suspiciously, a smile stretching over her face before squealing as Y/N nods shyly. She congratulates Y/N before walking away to her own table.

Y/N’s phone ‘dings’.

Alan

“hey babe, im cooking dinner tonight

what do u want? :))))”

She sighs with satisfaction, having someone supporting her through everything made her feel wanted. Alan is the perfect match for her. Regardless of dating for only six months (they've known each other since high school), he’s been a sturdy shoulder to lean on during the past two where she altered between crying over Harry or being a strong, independent woman that has had enough of being treated like shit. When he asked her out, granted a bit timidly since he wasn’t exactly sure if she was ready to move on, she hesitated but she trusts Alan. She also told herself that not all men are like Harry.

-----

Irene and Harry’s relationship didn’t last long after Y/N caught them in the bathroom. Actually, it ended not too long after. Since Harry’s attention was focused solely on her, Irene took advantage of that and asked him to purchase her a bunch of things that she ‘probably didn’t need’, Harry thinks. I mean, did she honestly need four of the same bags in different colours? Or having Harry book five-star restaurants around the city to celebrate Irene's friend's brother-in-laws birthday? Ridiculous. The price didn’t bother him as he had enough money to buy an island, but hearing her talk his ear off about a new Versace handbag or the recent fall line of Jimmy Choo heels that she just had to get her hands on; he’s had enough. Before officially officially splitting from Y/N, Irene had asked him to buy her stuff, sure, but it used to be minute things like a new perfume or some brand-name makeup. But now, it’s as if she thought her name was titled to Harry’s earnings, threatening to break up with him if he didn’t comply.

At first, he gave in to everything, mistaking the fear of Irene leaving him as something he was deathly afraid of. But now, realizing that the feelings he held for were nothing but sexual infatuation, something exciting and thrilling in his life. Now that he had nothing to hide, his life was giving an off vibe–yearning for Y/N’s presence. Yes, Harry missed Y/N.

He first felt a twinge in his heart in that bathroom, slowly but surely, it kept coming back stronger and more frequently. It happened especially before bed, when Y/N would usually speak to him about her day or ask him about his, or even caress him with gentle touches to calm him before sleeping, he misses her gestures that he only thought of as pestering and nagging during the last few months, but really it was nothing more than actions of love and concern. Irene never gave him a second glance, she cuddled into his chest, manicured razor sharp nails scratching his chest as if to be done as a calming notion, but Harry feels it as a burning sensation that urged him to shift uncomfortably from the woman beside him.

Irene was different from Y/N, stating the obvious. Y/N cleaned the house routinely, cooked the most flavourful dishes, and stocked the kitchen and bathroom with supplies efficiently. Harry believes in splitting the workload and chores between people who lived in the house –which was both of them– but Y/N took special charge in the household activities, saying that Harry needs his rest after being busy the whole day. He feels like a jerk sometimes knowing that she was stressed too, yet she continues to work harder than anyone he’d ever met. Besides that, his comparison was that Irene was rather unforgiving with chores. She’d requested many times that Harry hire someone else to do the work for them, she didn’t even live with him! Saying that her nails were too expensive or that her hands were too precious to handle the pressure of cleaning anything in the house. And when Harry did hire someone, she looked down on the helper as if she had the right to do so. Harry powered through her attitude for the good—recently mediocre— sex and the company.

As things got worse, he didn’t know how much more of Irene he can handle. When he received the news that she was cheating on him with her boss, he snapped. He spoke to that guy in person about giving Irene a promotion and this was how they repaid him. Frankly, it didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought; it didn't hurt as much as his break up with Y/N. He was relieved that she wasn’t going to be around anymore. But all things have an equal and opposite reaction because now, Harry felt extra lonely.

The slight twinge in his heart built into something grander when he was left alone with his own thoughts. Replaying his memories with Y/N trying to see where it went wrong. And at that moment, Harry realizes that it was all his fault. He was the reason why they drifted, he was the reason why she packed her things and left their house with nothing but a few stacks of bills in her hands to last for a few months because he’d essentially kicked her out of his life. What was he thinking?

-----

Y/N was on her lunch break for the day, deciding to grab food at the cafe a few blocks from the firm. She was hastily carrying herself through crowds of people with somewhere to go. Once she arrived, she stands behind a lengthy line of customers waiting to state their order to the cashier. Although Y/N rarely strays from getting her regular items, she scans the menu briefly anyway.

Her turn comes, ordering and paying for her food, she was asked to wait on the left side. The main entrance bell chimes, indicating that someone new had either left or entered the café.

Harry walks in with his grandpa hat covering much of his hair and he hopes that it's doing a good job at disguising his face. His hands held tight in his pockets as his lanky legs move him to the line-up. He did not need to look at the menu since he always gets his coffee black. Instead, his eyes scan the area, looking for watchful eyes from people who have recognized him or casually inspecting his surroundings for the sake of it. His eyes land on a familiar head of hair that he has to blink thrice to make sure of what he was really seeing.

There stood Y/N clad in her matching pantsuit, hair in a ponytail and a bag clutched on her elbow. She looks sideways and he was blessed with a side profile of her face. Oh, how he misses her. He decides to take a detour from his usual escapades and makes a beeline towards her.

"Hey"

Y/N turns around, face visibly displaying a mixture of disappointment, confusion, and anger upon seeing Harry.

"Hi," she says curtly, before turning around as her name was called. She grabs her latte and croissant, turning around swiftly before lightly knocking shoulders with Harry's broad ones, make an escape route to the exit. Even though she still had an hour or so left on her break, she doesn't think that she could handle spending any more time with Harry in the vicinity. So she exits and makes it out on the street that has cleared some during her fifteen minutes indoors.

"Y/N! Y/N, wait. Please," Harry shouts from behind her, weaving his way around people blocking his way to Y/N.

"What do you want, Harry?" You.

"I saw you and wanted to say hi," he explains, eyes finding hers trying to find any kind of emotion that meant she was somehow glad to see him. H finds none.

"Well, you said hi. See you around," Y/N briskly tries to walk away once again but is stopped when he grabs her wrist. A chill makes its way up her spine, heart beating untimely. She gulps.

"Please, Y/N. Let's talk,"

She pretends to look at her watch, rolling her eyes before saying, "Fine. You've got ten minutes,"

The pair walk side-by-side towards a nearby park. The silence between them was uncomfortable for both. Sitting on a bench, Harry shifts his body facing her, clearing his throat.

"I want to apologize for-for what I did before," Y/N can tell that he's nervous by the way his body language breaks down in from of her.

"You mean when you cheated on me and I caught you fucking her brains out in the bathroom? Or was it when you knew that your feelings changed for me but you led me on anyway?" Y/N raises her brows accusingly.

He gulps in response.

"Y-yeah for that. Look, I thought about it and it turns out that I still love you, Y/N. I still have feelings for you,"

She takes a bite of her croissant, shifting her gaze somewhere else and further emphasizing how uncomfortable she was feeling right now.

"And if you'd let me, I want to give it another try. I promise I won't ever do it again. You deserve the world and I'm willing to give it to you. I'll do anything that it takes to have you forgive me," he pleads seriously. If he had to jump off of a bridge for another chance at Y/N's love, he would do it. He will do anything to have Y/N forgive him. Anything.

He was blind without her, lost without any guidance and navigating the world alone. He needed Y/N to tell him that it was gonna be okay when times go rough; he needed Y/N to love him like she did before, the way he does for her right at this very moment. He wants to relive the past where he didn't take her for granted--when they were happy. And if he can't, he might as well give it another shot, to experience the happiness she brought him once again by trying the circumstances. He was ready for it if she was.

"I'm engaged, Harry."

His eyes were like laser beams boring through her face; eyebrows furrowing, lips pursing open and closed and his chest felt crushed from the force of her words. She didn't say in a tone to spite him or make him jealous, it was soft and gentle–merely stating a fact that he obviously missed out on because What?

"Engaged? Y/N, what are you talking about," He spits out nervously, not wanting to accept the truth but wanting to learn more about her status. It’d only been eight months, surely she couldn’t have moved on that fast. You’re one to talk, Harry. He snickers to himself.

"Alan and I—we're getting married," She takes a sip of her beverage, ring glinting against Harry's green eyes and he swears that he just saw his life flash before his eyes.

There it is. The ring that bonded Alan and Y/N together, glistening in the sunlight, taunting him. It rested so gently on her pinky as if it was meant to be there. When Harry imagined this moment, she wore a ring that he had given her because he was the one who got down on a knee, declaring his undying love for her, praising her for her beauty and grace, and asking her the question he'd pictured himself repeat about a hundred times under his breath trying to find the best way to ask her to be his wife.

"Y-you're getting married? Tell me you're lying," He sounds angry, demanding, and in disbelief of what's unfolding right in from of his eyes and ears. "Tell me that you're pulling my leg, love," he says his second statement with great vulnerability, voice cracking in the middle of it to which Y/N retracts her neck, appalled.

"No, I'm not kidding. Why would I do that?" Y/N was confused about why Harry was reacting the way he is right now. Shouldn't he be happy for her? After all, he did break it off between the two of them so he had no right to feel hurt or pained. He had Irene.

"Because I wanted it to be me!" He all but yells at her face. Neck vein straining from the blood rushing to his brain, making him dizzy with the knowledge he just received. Palms sweating profusely forcing him to wipe it on his jeans before he takes hold of her empty hand, taking it in his own which she surprisingly lets him.

"I wanted it to be me. I want you to be mine and now I can't because he—he's the one you're going to marry," A lone tear falls down his eyes, nose starting to get runny from the emotions that overwhelm him. She tries to pull her hand back to herself, but he doesn't let her.

"Why are you crying? You wanted this, you wouldn’t have cheated on me if you didn't want me out of your life," She tries to reason and justifies with his previous actions. Everything was making sense until he spits out the bullshit of still loving her. And even so, why did he wait so long to find her and tell her?

"It was a mistake! I was stupid and a huge asshole, I didn't think of the consequences." He grasps tightly to her hand, fearing that this may be the absolute last time he'll be able to touch her like this. "I took advantage of you, of your love and I shouldn't have because you're the most amazing person in this world. You gave me chance after chance and I didn't deserve any of it b-but I just wished you'd give me another one,"

Harry brings her hand up to his lips, kissing it multiple times while looking in her eyes sincerely.

"I'm glad you know that you already took my heart for granted and left me broken. But now, I finally found my happiness again, you want to take that away from me too? Just so you'd feel satisfied with yourself for getting the girl again?" She pulls away.

"Thanks, I'm flattered but even if I was single, I wouldn't dare give you another chance regardless if you are Harry Styles. I don't care if you can give me the world or anything I want because all I needed was for you to love, trust, and be honest with me." She takes hold of her bag strap blindly, holding her coffee cup in hand and standing up. "You didn't give me any of those,"

Harry stands as well, not prepared to lose her once more. "But I can now! I'll love you so much and I will give every ounce of it out of my body. If that's what you want, I'll do it. Just please,"

"Can't you see, H? I'm happy with Alan now. I've moved on, forgotten about you. For god's sake, I'm getting married!"

Each word she darted out of her mouth was like a gunshot to Harry. Wounds getting deeper and his body feeling heavier than usual, the emotional toll it was giving him was too much for him to handle

"Please. Do the same for yourself. I may not love you the way I did before, but I still care about you," Y/N states gently to Harry. If anything she sees him as a friend, still cares for his well-being. From the short distance, she sees a few girls whispering to each other and pointing at him, obviously recognizing his stance and demeanor.

"But I love you, Y/N! Isn't that enough?"

She only smiles at him before shaking her head, "Sometimes love isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to act on it, and sometimes cheating isn’t a great way to prove that.”

“I hope she was worth it.”

And before he could fire back at a chance to defend himself, the group of girls approaches him suddenly, catching him off guard.

He could hear them requesting to sign their phone cases, could hear the shutter of their phone cameras capturing his dumbfounded face, could hear them chattering about his work and he could hear them praise him for all the things he wasn't. Even with the roar of his crowd performances echoing how much they loved him, nothing beats Y/N's soft voice voicing out an, "I love you, Harry" He feels one girl shake his arm, usually he'd politely ask them to not touch him but at the moment he felt numb.

Because a few meters away, he witnesses Alan and Y/N walking towards each other with the brightest smile on their faces. Greeting each other with a hug, everything about them screamed being in love. Like Harry was, except the girl he adored was loving another man. What hurts the most–when they kissed each others' lips tenderly and his mind plays tricks on him, envisioning that he was the guy that Y/N was with except it flicks back to reality much too soon than he’d like it to be.

His imagination is proof of what could've been him and Y/N spending the rest of their lives together but of course, he’d mess that future up. He stands there wishing he could turn back time, praying to whoever it is up there that could help him find love again. Because his heart continuously breaks seeing her be happy with somebody else.

——- If you like it, shoot me a message If you don’t, pretend you do requests are open!

#harry styles angst #harry #harrystyles #harry styles #harry styles one shot #harry styles one shots #harry styles writing #harry styles imagines #harry styles imagine #harry styles cheating #harry styles fluff #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry writings #my writing #angst #cheating

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slamsams-blog · 4 years

Text

Goldeneye - #24WeeksofBond

24 Weeks of Bond continues this week with Goldeneye. Ask anybody who grew up with an N64 what their favorite Bond movie is. I’d be willing to bet 9 out of 10 of those people will tell you this film. I grew up with an N64, I knew the Goldeneye video game before I even knew it was a Bond Movie. The Goldeneye N64 game was my introduction to James Bond. Today, i feel like shouting from the mountain tops...I can now confidently say, that Goldeneye is my favorite Bond movie.

Besides the incredible amount of nostalgia playing multi-player Goldeneye in the basement of my best friends house almost every day after school - this movie is gritty, dark, witty, complex, and full of “punch you in the gut intensity”. Sean Bean plays 006, and it is the ultimate villain. Who would be a bigger adversary to Bond, then Bond himself? That’s how close 006 compares to 007. This film is as close to Bond vs. Bond that we will ever see. We also have the overtly sexual psychopath in Xenia Onotopp (Famke Janssen) and Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming) a high level computer programmer and overall sleazy creep who uses “boobs” as his passwords.

It’s hard to top this cast of characters. It doesn’t end with the bad guys either, we have our seductive Natalya Simonova, who isn’t the obvious “sex appeal” pick, which is nice. When we first see her, she has a wool sweater on, a “Karen” hair cut, and a voice lower than mine - but she gets her shit done and nobody is going to tell her no. I love seeing Natalya boss Bond around, one of my favorite Bond girls for sure. We also are introduced to the new M, Judi Dench. Of course, with any new boss, there is chatter within the work force and M finds herself over hearing some of it. I do wish we had some moment where M proves her trust, but it’s all well and good in the end because she’s Judi Dench, the best M ever...with all due respect to Bernard Lee of course.

This movie starts hot, with Bond bungee jumping off a giant dam in Russia. He then infiltrates their military base where he meets up with his pal, 006 Alec Trevelyan. We see them tackling this mission together, but Alec finds himself in trouble. Bond decides to improv, and adjusts the timers to 3 minutes instead of 6 - but Alec gets killed despite following orders. Bond is now pissed. He manages to escape by driving off a cliff to catch a falling airplane.

This is probably the most eye-rolling part of this movie. I can suspend my disbelief more than most (I’m a pro wrestling fan), but this is just non-sense. He manages to catch up to the nose diving airplane, get in, buckle up, adjust the rear view mirror, throw on some AC/DC for the road, and escape. We see the bombs going off, Bond has completed this mystery mission. We never really find out what the mission was for. I guess just to introduce us to Oromov and Trevelyan who will become key figures later on.

We come back from an intoxicating rendition of “Goldeneye” sung by Tina Turner, and we are now 9 years into the future. Think of all the potential movies we missed out on in those 9 years! We see Bond in Monaco being evaluated where he meets a crazy speed demon who turns out to be Xenia. Bond later goes to a casino where he find Xenia there and starts to realize that something troubling is brewing. After further digging, he finds out she has a connection to the Janus Group - a crime syndicate who has an unknown leader. Not really sure what Bond is doing in Monaco. Was he on holiday? Was he sent there for something in particular?

ANYWAY (thanks mom), Xenia ends up killing an admiral with her apparent titanium alloy thighs during a hot night and steals a “Tiger” helicopter that can withstand any sort of electro magnetic blast. Bond doesn’t get to it in time, and the helicopter takes off. Now Bond is really curious...and pissed. General Oromov from the opening and Xenia set off one of the Goldeneye satellites which trigger an electro magnetic pulse, destroying every type of computer generated device. They then enlist the help of Boris, who had just hacked into the FBI security system all nonchalantly before having a cig.

The Goldeneye destroys the area and Oromov tries to cover it up by blaming it on British separatists. But doesn’t realize that Natalya had survived the blast. Bond now wants to meet thee Janus, and goes to see a russian mafia don who Bond has had history with and gets a meeting set up. This is when we find out that Janus is actually Bond’s ole mate, Alec Trevelyan. Bond is stunned and shaken. 9 years after he saw his death, here he is. Trevelyan notes that he didn’t account Bond improving and setting the timers for 3 minutes which burned half his face, and broke his heart. “007s loyalty is always to the mission...never to his friends”. Tear.

The plan is to set off another Goldeneye in London, creating a financial meltdown, putting England back into the stone age. But now Bond has entered the fray, and is keen on throwing a wrench into the plans. He does so...with a tank. In one of the more entertaining chase scenes in Bond history, we see Bond chasing down Oromov with a bloody tank. Destroying everything in his path, and finding time to adjust his tie in the process. Man I love this scene. Oromov is also another great character. Played by Gottfried John, Oromov is a desperate, corrupt General - trying to put on a front as head of Russia’s space division, but also keep Janus’ plans in tact. With flask in hand, and sweating profusely, he has to tell Janus that Bond escaped.

(Seinfeld reference alert)

Bond saves Natalya from the bad guys, yadda yadda yadda, SATELLITE FIGHT SCENE!! Bond comes to blows with 006 on the second base where another Goldeneye detonator is being held. This fight is so brutal and hard hitting that it really feels like Bond is fighting Bond. These two, once friends, now bitter enemies. Just watching this fight hurts. And just when we think Bond is at a dead end, he kicks a lever for the ladder and drops all the way down to the tiniest platform on the bottom of the satellite, leaving himself with no room for error. The fight continues on this tiny platform where we eventually see Bond kick Trevelyan off and grab his foot for a final farewell.

I don’t necessarily have a fear of heights, but I do have a fear of falling. What happens next always leaves me with the feeling of my stomach being sucked up into my throat. Bond has Trevelyan by the foot as he dangles thousands of feet in the air. Alec finally looks up and says “For England, James”, then Bond says “STFU” and lets him go. I get shivers just thinking about it.

Oh, did I mention this score??? The music that plays throughout this scene is heart pounding and really gets me going. There’s nothing like incredibly written fight music and Goldeneye has the cream of the crop.

There is just so much to love with “Goldeneye”. But unfortunately for Pierce Brosnan, this movie will be his first and his best. Goldeneye was such a tremendous success coming off a 6 year hiatus after “Licence To Kill”, that all Brosnan’s next films suffered because of it. This film was so good because it was dark, had an unforgettable cast, and had a TOUCH of humor. That scene where Bond goes to see Valentine is really all the humor you need - how about that Minnie Driver cameo? After this, I guess the writers went all in on the humor bit of it because the rest of the Brosnan catalog can be little more cartoony and goofy. While I did enjoy “Tomorrow Never Dies” - it just does not compare to “Goldeneye”.

Pierce Brosnan is the perfect Bond for this era and this film in particular. I just cannot imagine and older Timothy Dalton doing this film justice. Goldeneye ushered in a new style of James Bond. This film would be a taste of what was to come with the future Daniel Craig movies, and it provided an opportunity for a new generation of young, teenage movie goers to hop on board the Bond Band Wagon with the N64 video game. It got me, that’s for sure. This was the first Bond film I ever saw, and I’m proud to say that it is my favorite Bond movie ever.

That’s it for me this week, let me know what you thought and why it was your favorite Bond movie ever!

Reviews from Friends:

My Mom:

I watched with your dad and two of your brothers. It was a very intense and exciting film. Brosnan is so good. But it was pretty complicated and as is typical, I have a hard time keeping up with it all. That is why I loved the simplicity of last weeks choice. Lol. Because I’m old. The characters were great and I loved the feisty females

Jeremy Tillema:

Greatest bond movie produces greatest first person shooter on the greatest gaming console of all time. I said it.

Jake Benrud:

Great review Sam, and I’m with you on this one. This is a fantastic Bond movie and one of my favorites, if not my favorite. I think I have seen this movie more times than any other (I think Casino Royale might be second). I’m pretty sure I had the VHS, and I think you and I watched it numerous times. (I think Joanna was getting sick of me quoting the movie when we were watching it since I knew all the lines.) This is the movie that really got me into Bond movies. The action, the plot, the twists all made this an excellent and entertaining installment in the Bond series. Makes me want to fire back up that ‘64 and get the rumble packs out!

Tyler Dahlgren

I have been following along to these and have been giving them the Facebook like, but haven’t been commenting or watching along because honestly I could probably recite every Bond moving verbatim from start to finish. My earliest childhood memories (way, way earlier than any kid has a business being exposed to Bond) are of sitting with my Grandpa in his recliner while he munched popcorn and watched Bond. For better or for worse they are like a comfort food for me.

I say all of that to say this. Goldeneye is my favorite. I still remember watching it for the first time with Mark Kulig. We played the game and watched the movie more times than you’d think possible. The double cross, resurrection storyline. The characters. The cast is stacked. It all adds up so well and revived the franchise from some abysmal showings. I love this movie.

24 Weeks of Bond will return next Monday with -

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

#Goldeneye #pierce brosnan #James Bond #Sean Bean #Famke Janssen #N64 #Nintendo #24WeeksofBond

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mermaidsirennikita · 5 years

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after that succession episode I need to hear your thoughts on the standouts: everything Kendall and roman/gerri.

OKAY

WELL

If anything, Kendall is even MORE my Number One Boy (Number One Boi?) than he was before he dropped that sick track. What was worse about that rap--the fact that it was actually somewhat decent in moments? The fact that he had to point out that the sick beat was created by his boy, Squiggle? Roman laughing but also clearly wanting to take that mic away from Kendall? Connor’s somewhat uncomfortable laughter? (Connor is a fucking loon, but this ep confirmed to me that he has far more big brother instincts deep within him, they’re just overshadowed by how INCREDIBLY broken he is. “That’s great, Kenny!” wasn’t even ironic lol, he genuinely hoped that Kendallw was drowning in pussy. As a fellow first pancake, I relate.) Shiv’s pure glee? The fact that when he approached Logan I was genuinely afraid that he’d end up with a butter knife in the throat?

The sad thing about the rap is that it was clearly like... Kendall getting THISCLOSE to completely unraveling. I’ve seen some people complain about how inconsistent Kendall’s behavior in this ep seemed compared to how depressed he was at the end of the last but... No, man. We thought we’d seen how broken Kendall could get, but Logan pushed him to another level last week and he transitioned into a manic state. Like, I’ve seen some takes about Kendall being bipolar... But you can have a manic episode without actually having bipolar disorder, so I’m not sure that’s it. I also think he was HIGH AS FUCK for a lot of this episode, definitely during the rap. Like, I just assume that Kendall is at least somewhat high for any scene that he’s upbeat in, but this??? Was another level. This is when “so fucked up that you can’t hug your own kids” is TURNED TO ELEVEN. And it was glorious. Throw the Emmys at Jeremy’s feet in 2020, that Best Actor race is over now.

Re: Jennifer... First off, I know that Naomi is gonna come back for the finale, so I’m not sure where all that stands. Doesn’t surprise me one bit that Jennifer looks vaguely like Rava. Secondly, GodIWishThatWasMe but we know this. Thirdly, the way he dropped her was awful but it was also just like, the tail end of that manic episode, as he sank back down to Earth. (And do I think that Rhea would have necessarily been able to manipulate him quite as easily if he hadn’t been manic as fuck? Idk, I feel like Kendall’s intense depression would have at least kept him from biting at the temptation of being The One again.)

I know that the Roy siblings are always at each other’s throats, but ugh we got So Much from them this week and I’d kinda like them to fight against Rhea even more? Though I also get why they can’t, because Roman and Kendall both would rather Rhea be The One than Shiv for plenty of reasons. However, if Roman’s highly amused and kinda sad reaction to the rap fed my Kendall/Roman feels, Shiv basically pimping out Kendall to Rhea (after offering up Tom lmao, which is something my beloved @beavesaintmarie called with weird accuracy?) and him feeding Rhea shitty intel re: Rose fed my Shiv/Kendall feels.

I can’t wait to find out how he’ll crash and burn next. The rules of storytelling indicate that eventually, Kendall’s gotta make some measure of an improvement, even if it’s only to eventually crash and burn again.... But who knows?

Roman/Gerri!!!! He’s IN LOVE, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. I’m not gonna say it’s a traditional love. I’m not gonna say it’s like, straightforward. But as soon as Roman started messing with that flower I was like oh fuck. He’s gonna pop the question. And he fucking DID.

I’m pretty sure that Roman was referencing a famous case of murder/cannibalism in Germany too? Which is funny (?) because in that case, the victim actually offered himself up to his killer willingly because his kink was the idea of being eaten? Like, they both got off on the killer cutting the victim’s penis off, and then they ate it? (Or tried to.) So... I can only assume that Roman reads about that kind of shit online and calls Gerri for phone sex.

Also, you can BET that Roman proposed in part because he realized that Gerri might’ve fucked his dad. That just... was very *chef’s kiss* for him. I also love that when Rhea tried to cozy up to him he was like “I’M TAKEN THANKS, ALREADY HAVE A ZOMMY”.

I’ve now read, like, four different actor interviews that indicate that Roman is probably gonna be making some kind of move towards the end of this season and is gonna get his play at the throne, probably in s3. A couple were from Kieran and J. Smith-Cameron (Gerri) but Brian Cox and Alan Ruck have both alluded to similar things. So I can only assume that this is what we’re gearing up for. Buying the wrong football team aside, I actually think that Roman has potentially better business prospects than Shiv or Kendall... though that could change week to week.

UGH. SO MUCH.

#succession #Anonymous

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blapisblogs · 4 years

Photo

Corey Taylor (yes, he’s still here) has so little to do in this “review”- er, is so bored of this “review”- uh, I mean, is so bored with watching The Wall that he starts drifting off. Doug somehow knows this, stares at him through the TV, and says “Is there anybody who cares”, leading into the next song parody. Part-way into the song Tamara Chambers comes back in as the maid, Malcolm Ray as a body guard (still dressed as one of the “kids” only now he’s wearing glasses), and... Brad Jones (aka The Cinema Snob) as the manager (I guess), all of whom try to wake up Corey Taylor by overacting like hell.

For those who don’t know, most people ended up leaving Channel Awesome with three exceptions: Doug Walker (of course), Larry Bundy Junior (who only stayed for laughs), and Brad Jones, so I’m not that surprised the latter has turned up here. I’m ashamed to say that I used to watch some of Brad’s content, but since the whole Not So Awesome document incident happened, he’s said some pretty terrible things about the whole situation (he’s the one who infamously said “Logan Paul filmed a dead body and he still has a career” during an interview talking about the Change the Channel movement), so I’ve since stopped watching him as well. That said, at least he’s slightly better than Doug is at imitating the film counterpart he’s standing in for (in this case Pink’s manager, played by the late Bob Hoskins), but that’s hardly saying much when Doug’s not even trying.

While the first line spoofs “Is There Anybody Out There?”, the actual song that gets parodied next is “Comfortably Numb”, a song where Pink is being medicated by a doctor in order to perform for his next show. I don’t have much else to say about what happens during this parody, it’s really uninteresting, which is exactly what Doug is saying about these parts of the film. The thing is, those “slow, mopey” songs serve a purpose to the plot: they’re about how Pink feels as he’s gradually isolating himself from everyone else. This parody? It’s a whole song calling the other ones slow and boring, and takes yet another jab at Roger Waters. This is, what, the third or fourth parody song in a row where he’s insulted him now? We got it the first time, Doug. There are so many other things in this album and film that could be discussed here: how the gradual abuse affects Pink’s psyche and causes him to further spiral into depression, the dangers of what Pink is doing to himself (and unintentionally others), the directions they took for this film that differ from the album, anything. Yes, Waters’s ego might be hard to ignore while knowing the backstory, but you could at least try to talk about literally anything else regarding the film. Or, if you wanna talk about Roger Waters’s ego behind this project so badly, Doug, then actually talk about it. Talk about the spitting incident that led to this, talk about how Waters had the most creative control on this project while the other three members had almost no say in it, talk about the disagreements he had with director Alan Parker while making this film, talk about how this led to Waters leaving the band and later tried to sue them for still calling themselves Pink Floyd afterwards (which he of course lost). Doug does literally none of this, which makes it feel like he either assumes everyone knows this already or he himself doesn’t know all of it due to not doing any research into it (and let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter turned out to be true). I’m sorry I keep bringing up this one thing, but that’s because that’s what Doug keeps doing in this “review”; he’s a broken record.

The song eventually ends when Brad Jones tells Corey Taylor to “sober up or have an existential conflict”. I didn’t even know he was supposed to be drunk in this “review”, but I guess that would explain a lot. Also, I guess this means that Doug Walker doesn’t find Pink’s internal conflict (which is, you know, the whole point of the album and film) to be interesting, which at this point is unsurprising but still frustratingly disappointing. It’s also sad considering that Doug is a critic who can’t be bothered to consider internal conflict as valid as existential conflict or think that Pink’s internal conflict is causing some of his existential conflict. For someone who goes on about character depth and development in other things, Doug sure avoids talking about any of that for this in favor of continually shitting on it for the sake of poorly-thought-out jokes.

Anyway, it then goes to the in-video commercial break. I’m not even half-way through yet.

Fuck.

[Lyrics (and snark) below the cut]

Is there anybody who cares?

Wake up (wake up, wake up) Are you still awake in that chair? Just keep listening to me I know you’re kinda bored

[Five lines and every single one leaves good openings for jokes at its expense. At least the parodies before this weren’t this easy to make jokes about, this is just... It’s too much to not use it as an excuse to make fun of it, yet also too easy. Fuck you?]

Yeah sure (yeah sure, yeah sure) It’s a lot of slow songs now It’s hard to keep on track With mellow songs back-to-back

[Again, this means that you somehow consider “What Shall We Do Now” (warning: this one has NSFW and unsettling imagery depicting sex, violence, blood, drugs, Nazis, death, and other things, and also gets really loud), “Young Lust”, “One of my Turns”, and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)” to be “mellow”, which they aren’t really, at least not compared to the others. I can’t even think of how you could say that about “Young Lust”, unless... Doug, please don’t tell me that you think “Empty Spaces” and “Young Lust” are the same song, because I cannot comprehend how you could know that “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” are separate songs but not know that those two are not one and the same.]

(Sorry, I can’t tell what these next couple of lines are saying because this is the part where Brad, Tamara and Malcolm come in and the former starts talking over the song. Given how crappy these lyrics are, maybe that’s for the best.)

You need to watch this movie first Just a half-hour more Come on, you’ve gotten through worse

[I’ve been telling myself that since roughly the ten minute mark of this video, and yet every time I come back here to type more about it I keep feeling the urge to close the tab for it.]

You can’t be bored while we are singing

[Wait, “we”? Are you making fun of all of the members of Pink Floyd now instead of just Roger Waters? What did David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright do to you, asshole? I thought you were taking these potshots at Waters because of the effect this album ended up having on the other band members even after he left, now it sounds like you’ve got some personal beef with Pink Floyd in general, which gets really screwy given something you end up saying later.]

Unless you don’t wanna be seen as deep

[Doug, you can’t be bothered to even analyze or even properly talk about the surface-level symbolism that’s right there in front of you in this film; you don’t get to lecture me on what’s deep or not.]

Your attention constantly may fade Your eyes move, but do you care what we’re saying?

[You might as well have called this “Tempting Fate: The Song” with all these lyrics ripe to make fun of.]

When I was a child I remember being invested Like hearing “The Dark Side of the Moon”

[You can barely comprehend the things that are going on in “The Wall”, don’t drag “Dark Side of the Moon” into this.]

Now I’ve grown, this section starts to drag Like a long neck, I just don’t understand Is this now how I am? I have become comfortably dumb

[As many others have already pointed out, that is literally the easiest joke you could’ve gone with for that line. It’s like turning “Kingdom Hearts” into “Kingdom Farts”; a literal child could’ve come up with that joke.]

Okay (okay, okay) Just get through the damn flick You want to seem cool But this ain’t getting your kicks Can you listen? (Listen, listen) Later there will be a quiz

[You are the last person who should be giving quizzes about this film or album, Doug.]

Somebody has to feel the same When I become so lame

[“Lame”? I could be wrong, but last I checked Waters is doing just fine. Or are you talking about the other members of Pink Floyd? Because from what I’ve heard Gilmour isn’t currently doing so well mentally, and if you’re making fun of that, then... wow, fuck you.]

There is only so long I can go With hearing a millionaire say that things blow It’s like I’ve been asleep for days The film plays, but I can’t take the complaining

[You know, you keep saying that, but at least people can relate to some of the things that were brought up in the songs here. Losing a loved one in a tragic and violent way at a young age? Having an overbearing, emotionally abusive parent? An oppressive and unfair school system? An unfaithful partner? As unfortunate as it is, those are all things some people out there can relate to. At least they’re all not petty, shallow insults about things Waters doesn’t personally like, Doug.]

Like telling a child “It’s just how everything is” Just fighting to open my eyes The epic feels I had are gone I don’t know what is going on

[Neither do the people who watched this and know nothing about the film or album, from what I could tell: you’ve done nothing to help them understand what’s actually happening given how much context you’ve left out. All you’ve done is go “Roger Waters has a big ego, Roger Waters has a big ego, people who complain about school are special snowflakes, something something World War 2, animation, slow mopey songs, did I mention Roger Waters has a big ego?”]

Now the child is gone And I’ve moved on I wish those days weren’t just a phase

[Since you said there was a quiz later, Doug, I’m gonna have to retaliate and ask you to submit an essay to me explaining why you thought it was necessary to put this song into your already lengthy “review”. No, you are not allowed to use the phrase “Fuck Roger Waters and his ego” or words to that effect; that alone is not a decent argument.]

#Blapis tears down NC's The Wall #abuse mention //#drug mention //#long post #bold text warning

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the-rosecut-jeweler · 5 years

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A Free Spirit in Kul’Tiras

NAME: Allisiana Rosaline Holt

FACE CLAIM: Emma Watson

TITLE: Baroness, Lady

NICKNAME: Siana (current), Lily (childhood)

AGE: 23

HEIGHT: 5′4″

SPECIES: Human

GENDER: Female

BIRTHDAY: July 25th

SUN SIGN: Leo

RESIDENCE: Her own Boralus townhouse

LANDS / HOLDINGS: Blackmarsh Estate

SKILLS: crafting fine jewelry, chi healing, persuasion

DRINK: Strawberry wine

FOOD: Goldenbark Apple turnovers

DAY OR NIGHT: Dusk

SNACKS: Tel’abim Banana-nut bread

SONGS: The Dress by Alan Menken [click link to listen]

PETS: Jack, an 3-year-old husky

COLOR: Summer colors - Teal & Gold

FLOWER: Gilnean roses and gardenias

EYE COLOR: Chestnut brown

HAIR COLOR: Copper brown, bronze highlights

BODY TYPE: fit, modest curves

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good Everything you do is for the greater good, but you feel like needless bureaucracy often gets in the way. You’re trying to make the world a better place, but you really need to do it your own way.

PREDOMINANT ARCHETYPES:

PERSONALITY: ENFP-A - The Campaigner

Campaigners are fiercely independent, and much more than stability and security, they crave creativity and freedom.

The Campaigner personality is a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party, but unlike types in the Explorer Role group, Campaigners are less interested in the sheer excitement and pleasure of the moment than they are in enjoying the social and emotional connections they make with others. Charming, independent, energetic and compassionate, the 7% of the population that they comprise can certainly be felt in any crowd.

More than just sociable people-pleasers though, Campaigners, like all their Diplomat cousins, are shaped by their Intuitive (N) quality, allowing them to read between the lines with curiosity and energy. They tend to see life as a big, complex puzzle where everything is connected – but unlike Analyst personality types, who tend to see that puzzle as a series of systemic machinations, Campaigners see it through a prism of emotion, compassion and mysticism, and are always looking for a deeper meaning.

Many other types are likely to find these qualities irresistible, and if they’ve found a cause that sparks their imagination, Campaigners will bring an energy that oftentimes thrusts them into the spotlight, held up by their peers as a leader and a guru – but this isn’t always where independence-loving Campaigners want to be. Worse still if they find themselves beset by the administrative tasks and routine maintenance that can accompany a leadership position. Campaigners’ self-esteem is dependent on their ability to come up with original solutions, and they need to know that they have the freedom to be innovative – they can quickly lose patience or become dejected if they get trapped in a boring role.

[ SOCIETY ]

$ Financial : wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty. ✚ Medical : fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged. ✪ Class or Caste : upper / middle / working / slave / unsure. ✔ Education : qualified / unqualified / studying ✖ Criminal Record : yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no / has committed crimes, but not caught yet.

[ FAMILY ]

◐ Marital status : married - happily / unhappily / engaged or betrothed / partnered / single / divorced / separated / widowed ◒ Children : has a child or children / has no children / wants children. ◑ Relationship with Family : close with sibling(s) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased / Has cousins and is close to them ◔ Filtration : orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parents

[ TRAITS + TENDENCIES ]

♦ extroverted / introverted / in between. ♦ disorganized / organized / in between. ♦ close minded / open-minded / in between. ♦ calm / anxious / in between. ♦ disagreeable / agreeable / in between. ♦ cautious / reckless / in between. ♦ patient / impatient / in between. ♦ outspoken / reserved / in between. ♦ leader / follower / in between. ♦ empathetic / unemphatic / in between. ♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in between. ♦ traditional / modern / in between. ♦ hard-working / lazy / in between. ♦ cultured / uncultured / in between / unknown. ♦ loyal / disloyal / unknown. ♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown.

[ BELIEFS ]

★ Faith : monotheist / polytheist / atheist / agnostic. ☆ Belief in Ghosts or Spirits : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care. ✮ Belief in an Afterlife : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care. ✯ Belief in Reincarnation : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care. ❃ Belief in Aliens : yes / no / don’t know / don’t care. ✧ Religious : orthodox / liberal / in between / not religious. ❀ Philosophical : yes / no. / in between.

[ SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION ]

❤ Sexuality : heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual. ❥ Sex : sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable. ♥ Romance : romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable. ❣ Sexually : adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious. ⚧ Potential Sexual Partners : male / female / agender / other / none / all. ⚧ Potential Romantic Partners : male / female / agender / other / none / all.

[ ABILITIES ]

☠ Combat Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none. ≡ Literacy Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none. ✍ Artistic Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none. ✂ Technical Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none.

[ HABITS ]

☕ Drinking Alcohol : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess. ☁ Smoking : trying to quit / never / sometimes / frequently / to excess. ✿ Other Narcotics : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess. ✌ Medicinal Drugs : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess. ☻ Indulgent Food : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess. $ Splurge Spending : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess. ♣ Gambling : never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

[ MOST NOTABLE PERSONALITY TRAITS ]

REVERENCE

One part of you dreams of giving yourself up – perhaps just for a while – to a hero or mentor. In the right circumstances you can flourish by letting go of your ego. In your inner life, reverence plays out as a willing submission to your own conscience. In the outside world, you might get frustrated searching for something worth believing in – a country, a person, a company – but you will always be open to feeling respect, admiration and wonder.

SENSITIVITY

You have delicate, sensitive perceptions; you can be deeply moved by appearances – the right light in a room, or good food, or the texture of a piece of clothing. Expressive, intelligent language has a powerful hold on you; your mind works better when it is inspired and provoked by vivid imagery. It can be sad to live in a world which is often so ugly and not properly looked after. But you know that things can be otherwise, and you have the ability to appreciate the world at its best.

RESILIENCE

You have a tendency, after a setback, to turn your emotions towards restriving. What attracts you is the idea of wiping out a humiliation by resumed action – overcoming weakness, repressing your fear. Because part of your motive is pride, you can sometimes be unwilling to admit weakness or to receive aid. But at heart, tour insistence on coming back and never folding has taught you a valuable pessimism: you know that important journeys are never easy.

Your archetype is the realist.

traits: practical, understanding, honest, brutal, logical, creator, intelligent, sensible, down-to-earth, reasonable

the realist is most commonly used to symbolize the highest possible outcome in a dire situation. they are the ones who have everything planned, and hand out reality checks as if they were pamphlets to those who need them–which, quite honestly, is everyone who isn’t a realist. although they can be harsh (brutal truth over merciful), they are nurturers and care more than they let on. realists tend to do things that will lead to the best outcome, and use their knowledge of reading people to manipulate situations and problems in order to get out of a rock and a hard place.

FLOWER PERSONALITY Allisiana is:

Ginger

You Are: Spirited. A feisty and fiery companion, quick with an opinion, a laugh or an idea. Warm, friendly and inviting, you never allow an awkward moment to pass. In fact, even cold and distant people warm up to you more quickly than others. Negative experiences or too much indulgence, however, can send you into a bit of a tailspin, and when hurt you may become quite cold and distant. Ginger people do best when their natural warmth and affection is flowing freely, giving them easy access to their love of life.

An international socialite, ginger has worked its way into culinary circles around the world because of its digestive and warming talents*. When experiencing occasional digestive disturbance as a result of overindulging, you can rely on the warming, spicy properties of ginger root to restore a sense of balance.

Known for its ability to relieve occasional indigestion and prevent nausea associated with motion sickness, ginger first appeared in the writings of Confucius in the 5th century BC.* By the 1st century AD ginger had become one of the most commonly traded spices. During this time ginger was so valuable that, in England, one pound of it was worth the cost of a sheep! Spicy, rich and warm, with sweet undertones, ginger is considered a warming herb in some traditions and makes a wonderful spicy tea for the winter months.

Nettle

You Are: Truly a nurturing and supportive friend, you’re the kind of person that just isn’t for everyone. But those who take the time are rewarded with your gentle disposition, and the kind of friendship that does a person good no matter the difficulty they’re facing. When out of balance, you can become more prickly than supportive or nurturing, though—a sign that you need to shower yourself with the same kind of nurturing you so freely give to others.

Nettle is a deeply supportive herb that has been used for centuries as a tonic to support your body’s well-being. A traditional springtime tonic whose alluring “green” taste is a reflection of the rising green of spring, nettle gently nourishes the whole body.

Nettle’s genus name, Urtica, comes from the Latin urere, meaning “to burn”, an obvious reference to nettle’s nasty sting. Nettle is widespread around the world, and evidence of this very old plant was even found in Neolithic stilt dwellings in Switzerland dating back to the third millennium B.C. It has long been enjoyed for its gentle support for the whole body, as well as for its refreshing, green taste.

Passionflower

You Are: Deeply concerned about others and the world around you, you have a developed sense of what’s right and just. You’re a bit of an idealist and strive to see your vision of perfection realized in the world. On occasion you get out of balance, and you may feel a deep sense of unease and be prone to worry—especially at night, tossing and turning over all that is wrong or that needs fixing.

Known and loved for its power to calm restless minds and relieve occasional sleeplessness, passionflower may help restore a sense of peace and ease and “all is right with the world,” as well as helping you get the rest you need to feel good again.

Anyone who has ever seen a passionflower can appreciate its wildly intense beauty. In fact, Spanish missionaries who encountered it saw religious significance in its anatomical structure. Native to the Americas, and used by Native Americans to promote rest and relaxation, passionflower has made its way into Western herbal traditions for its soothing and relaxing qualities.

#the rose-cut jeweler #aesthetic #character sheet #Siana Holt #a free spirit in kul'tiras

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adamwatchesmovies · 6 months

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Grace: The Possession (2014)

If you look hard, you’ll find that Grace: The Possession (titled simple Grace in some markets) isn’t completely without merit. It’s trying something new - which is always praiseworthy - and there are a couple of moments during its big scene that are clever. Before you get excited, know that it’s hardly worth sitting through the film to see them. This is a predictable, poorly-written horror film.

Grace (Alexia Fast) has finally mustered the courage to leave her grandmother’s home and go to college. Unfortunately, the 18-year-old devout Catholic is ill-suited for the culture shock that awaits her. Things get worse when she begins experiencing nightmares and terrifying hallucinations. Is it mental illness, or the same dark force grandma (Lin Shaye) claims caused Grace’s mom’s death?

Grace: The Possession is almost entirely shot from a first-person point of view, which is a neat idea. This cinematic technique allows us to simulate the terrifying loss of control you would feel while something else takes over your body. As the possession gets worse, Grace hallucinates some skin-crawling or perplexing stuff that might be scary to see from the usual point of view but is even more unsettling from her's. This does mean that those who couldn’t handle the shakiness of “found footage” horror will have a difficult time watching the film, but director Jeff Chan (who co-wrote the story with Chris Pare) must've been aware. Instead of compromising, he made a bold choice and chose to stick with it all the way through.

It’s a shame the film has nothing going on outside of its vantage point. Grace has no personality. Her grandmother is a domineering bully and nothing more. Every single college student reaches for a bottle of alcohol the second they get up, party all night with the help of drugs and cares more about sex than their classes. Seriously, it’s the first day of school and Grace’s roommate, Jessica (Alexis Knapp), is partying like graduation is happening tomorrow. It’s a cartoon.

In theory, three questions will keep you engaged. “What’s happening to Grace?”, “What happened to Grace’s mother?" and "Who is Grace's father?” with the title and premise giving the first question away, you hope the second and third questions will be harder to decipher. They aren’t. The second Grace comes home and meets Father John (Alan Dale) and Deacon Luke (Joel David Moore), you know EXACTLY what’s going on. The film constantly features little things that cinematically rub you the wrong way. Clues about Grace's father are conveniently left out in the open (why hadn’t she found them earlier?). At school, Grace only hangs out with people you know she would never be friends with. For that matter, if she’s so religious and her grandmother is too, why didn’t she apply to a Christian college? it makes no sense.

The film’s conclusion contains several head-scratchers between the unintentionally funny moments. To no one’s surprise, Father John is Grace’s father. It was pretty clear from his introduction that he was up to no good. When the exorcism he attempts fails, Grace goes full demonic and then murders him, saying he’s got to pay for raping Grace’s mom (we see it happen in a scene so ill-conceived I'm stunned someone at the studio didn’t speak up and get it thrown in the trash). The murder just doesn’t seem right. If Grace had given herself to Satan or made a pack with a demon, I'd understand, but why would an evil entity kill someone evil, even if they were a priest? Shouldn’t the possessor try to make humanity suffer more by keeping him alive? Or did the sinister force know Deacon Luke would then invite it into his body to save Grace? It leads to a "scary" twist, where we see the possessed Deacon hosting mass. It's supposed to unsettle but only raises more questions. How does he perform the ceremony when touching holy water makes his skin sizzle? See what I mean about this being poorly thought-out? Things happen not because they make sense; they happen so the movie can have “scares”.

The one new thing Grace: The Possession has to offer isn’t nearly enough to offset the writing. You’ve seen everything this movie has to offer - except for the camerawork - before, done better elsewhere. It’s an awful horror film that borders on the offensive. (July 25, 2021)

#Grace: The Possession #Grace #movies #films #movie reviews #film reviews #Lyn Shaye #2014 movies #2014 films #Jeff Chan #Chris Pare #Peter Huang #Alexia Fast #Alan Dale #Alexis Knapp

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fuckyeahhistory · 5 years

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OK I know what you’re thinking. Why is the 1533 Buggery Act such a big deal! After all, it’s a piece of Tudor law:

A) that sounds dry AF

B) has nothing to do with me!

Well, if you care about LGBTQ+ rights (or let’s be blunt, basic human rights) than this is a piece of Tudor law that you have to know about!

The 1533 Buggery Act wove a tangled web that stretches throughout history. Beyond those who were caught up in its immediate wake, It’s threads lead us to Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment, Alan Turing’s conviction and the abysmal pit where fundamental rights should be, that the LGBTQ+ community and their allies are still fighting against.

So if that still sounds dry AF, then strap in Donald, because you’re about to get your mind blown.

Seriously we’re getting into world view changing stuff!

The Buggery Act was the brainchild of Henry VIII who had a fun habit of lumbering the UK with laws that came out of him wanting to make a point during a hissy fit…yet inexplicably stuck around for hundreds of years at a major human cost (e.g that time he made it legal to execute someone with severe mental health issues) The 1533 Buggery Act was no exception!

But lets take it back to pre-Henry for a second. Prior to 1533 there were no set laws to persecute homosexuality in England. That’s not to say it wasn’t. In the 13th century two legal codes called for men caught having same sex relationships to be buried alive or burnt, which is horrific!

However, these were suggestions, not actual laws and there is no evidence that these punishments were ever carried out. For the most part, the then frowned upon act was dealt with in the ecclesiastic courts (so basically it was left with god and his earthly servants to deal with either after death or in the realm of the church)

As such, the sudden decision to make homosexuality criminal was a big deal. In fact it was such a big deal that this sharp turn to criminalisation actually had to be addressed in the original statues outlining the 1533 act. Which says that the law was in part created to make homosexuality clearly punishable, saying:

“For as moche as there is not yet sufficient & condigne punishment appointed & limitted by the due course of the lawes of this realme for the detestable & abominable vice of buggeri committed with mankind or beest.”

It goes on to explain the possible punishments for those caught committing ‘buggery’:

“And that the offenders being herof convict by verdicte, confession, or outlaurie, shall suffer suche peynes of dethe, and losses, and penalties of their goodes, cattals, dettes, londes, tenements, and heredytamentes, as felons benne accustomed to do accordynge to the order of the common lawes of this realme. And that no person offendynge in any suche offence, shalbe admitted to his clergye”

Obviously the clear biggy here is ‘pain of death’, but right at the bottom of this portion of transcript there’s the sentence:

‘And that no person offending in such offence shall be admitted to his clergy’ – that right there is the crux of this whole piece of legislation.

Because why create The Buggery Act and criminalise same sex relationships at this particular moment in time?

To persecute the Catholic Church of course!

If you’re thinking , ‘that makes little to no sense’, gold star! It doesn’t… well at least until you break down what was going down in 1533.

You see, until the 1530’s England had been part of the Catholic Church. But, Henry VIII was desperate to break away from the church as it wouldn’t grant him a divorce so he could marry his side chick, Anne Boleyn. So Henry decided to create a new church for England, one that he’d be the head of (and wouldn’t you know it, the head of this new church just happened to be A-ok with divorce).

Sadly creating your own church doesn’t magically erase your countries already existing, centuries old religion overnight. So Henry worked with his right hand man, Thomas Cromwell, to loosen the tight hold Catholicism had on England and for a double win, also siphon it’s money to Henry.

The 1533 Buggery Act was just part of this plan. It was solely designed to take away a little bit of the power away from The Catholic Church, not to actually persecute homosexuality.

And yet this law was about to take its first victim.

By 1540 the Buggery Act had done its job. The Catholic Churches hold on England had been loosened, Henry had married Anne Boleyn (and then had her executed), married again (this time she’d died in childbirth) and was onto marriage number four. Thomas Cromwell had played Cupid for these nuptials, hooking Henry up with his new wife, Anne of Cleves. Sadly Henry wasn’t a fan of his new bride and this was such a big no no that it led to Thomas Cromwell’s death.

But as is probably clear by now, Henry was a petty bitch, and so he made sure that when Thomas went down, he wasn’t going alone.

On the 29 June 1540 Thomas Cromwell was beheaded for treason and his mate, Walter Hungerford, became the first person to be executed under The Buggery Act (among other allegations).

A bloody punishment, with the Buggery Act added as an extra dollop of humiliation for Hungerford and as an additional middle finger to Cromwell who’d helped create the act.*

*side note: before we start feeling really sorry for Walter Hungerford, he was an abusive man who imprisoned his wife to the extent she had to drink her own urine to survive. So you know. Maybe hold the sympathy cards.

Henry VIII

Thomas Cromwell

Ok, that was A LOT to take in. So let’s pause and take a quick moment to look at where we are:

We have a law that was created to criminalise homosexuality BUT was actually used to screw over the Catholic Church

We have a first victim of the law…BUT he was most likely executed not because of the law itself but as an F U to his mate who created the law.

So, we can all agree that thus far, The Buggery Act is a very bloody farce. But that does that mean it’s done?

OF COURSE NOT!

Though the law was repealed by Henry VIII’s daughter, Queen Mary I in 1553 (who wanted power over this to go back to the Catholic Church and it’s ecclesiastic courts), once she died, her successor and sister, Queen Elizabeth I made the Buggery Act law once more.

And from there it started to truly transform into a law for persecution.

Using a Latrice Royale gif to cut the tension, but just a warning: It’s about to get really dark for a bit.

For much of the 15th and 16th centuries arrests and executions under the Buggery Act were few and far between. However, that didn’t happen stop this horrifying law from spreading.

One of the huge issues of The Buggery Act being a law, was that Britons leaving the country took it with them. Take for example those plucky puritans who set sail for the brave new world of America – alongside terrible hats and a smattering of racism, they made sure to also pack legal persecution!

And so the legal execution of people for homosexuality began in a new country. In 1624, Virginia hung Richard Cornish, a ships captain, for ‘forcible sodomy’ of his ships 29 year old cabin boy.

Two years later, Massachusetts hung William Plain on allegations of sodomy that took place in England (so before he even moved to America!).

That same year, the countries New Netherlands colony successfully managed to achieve the discrimination trifecta when they used the Buggery Act to strangle and ‘burn to ashes’, Jan Creoli, a poor black gay man.

If you thought things were bad, they are about to get even worse.

Back in Britain, a more vocal queer community was starting to appear, thanks to the underground popularity of Molly Houses (places where queer men could be free to openly show their sexuality, kind of the great great great grandfather of the small town gay bar). But this emerging light in the dark attracted the worst kind of people and they dedicated themselves to eradicating what they saw as the gay scourge.

One such group was the catchily named, The Society For The Reformation of Manners. Determined to rid London of its LGBT subculture, they worked undercover to infiltrate Molly Houses, gather evidence against its users and then together with the police, raid them.

One such raid was that of Mother Claps house in 1726. Dozens of men were rounded up and arrested, with several fined and pilloried. But that’s not the worst of it.

The Society For The Reformation of Manners successfully helped to leverage the Buggery Act to hang three of the arrested men for the crime of having sex, or as one witness spat out during the trial:

‘Making love to one another as they call’d it’

Example of an execution, like that of the Mother Clap House victims. from the era

During the 1800’s the executions continued. Trials for men accused under The Buggery Act sprung up across England. Some of those found guilty had the relative luck (though the chance of survival still wasn’t great) at instead being transported to Australia, but others weren’t so lucky.

The last men executed under The Buggery Act were James Pratt and John Smith, in 1835.

A husband and father, James Pratt, met with John Smith in August 1935, at an ale house in London for a drink. The pair then got chatting with an older man, William Bonill and went back to his rooms.

William Bonill soon left to get another drink at the pub, leaving James and John alone. It was after this that Bonill’s landlord reported finding the pair having sex.

Neither James Pratt or John Smith stood a chance in court. If you are in any doubt on that front, just read the opening transcript from John Smith’s prosecutor.

‘feloniously, wickedly, diabolically, and against the order of nature, had a venereal affair with one James Pratt, and did then and there, feloniously, wickedly, diabolically, and agains the order of nature, carnally know the said James Pratt, and with him the said James Pratt did then and there feloniously, wickedly, diabolically, and against the order of nature, commit and perpetrate the detestale, horrid, and abominable crime (among Christians not to be named) called buggery, to the great displeasure of Almighty God, to the great scandal of all human kind’

Charles Dickens actually attended Newgate jail, when the men were awaiting sentencing and recalled:

‘Their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world.’

He was, of course, right. Of seventeen others sentenced to death at the same time as John and James (for crimes including attempted murder) all had their sentences commuted to transportation to Australia. All expect John Smith and James Pratt.

A huge crowd gathered outside Newgate Jail to watch their deaths.

Watching his (possible) partner, John Smith, being blindfolded and his noose put on, caused James Pratt an understandable level of anguish. He reportedly went physically weak, needing help just to stand and calling out:

‘Oh God, this is horrible. This is indeed horrible.’

Though we don’t have clean cut evidence that the two were in a relationship, it’s hard to read this as anything other than love and the devastation of James knowing what his partner was about to go through.

Which I think summarises the pointlessness and brutality the Buggery Act had on all those who feel under its wake. Of it’s last two victims; two men who just wanted a private moment to be together and died because of that.

Newspaper from the hanging of James Pratt and John Smith

The Buggery Act remained in place in one form or another until 1861 when the Offences Against The Person Act replaced it.

The new law abolished the death sentence for ‘buggery’, instead punishing those convicted with a prison sentence of up to life. In 1967 the laws around homosexuality as an illegal act were dropped.

All of this, because in 1533 a pissed of King set up a law that he hoped would bring down a religion – the persecution of thousands if not millions, was just secondary.

If you want to read up more on this and other areas of LGBT+ history (and please do!) some great sources are below:

Rictor Norton, for a treasure trove of articles and essays on the history of LGBTQ+ history in England dating back to the medieval era.

The Peter Tatchall Foundation, a human rights charity with an amazing section of history of laws that sought to persecute

The British Library, where you can look at so many of the original documents I mention in this, digitally wherever you are in the world!

Why you have to know about the 1533 Buggery Act OK I know what you’re thinking. Why is the 1533 Buggery Act such a big deal! After all, it’s a piece of Tudor law:

#featured #LGBT #LGBTQ #tudor

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thegayhimbo · 3 years

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Instances where Bill Compton has committed Rape/Sexual Assault:

The Southern Vampire Mystery Books:

TRIGGER WARNING AHEAD! This is the rape scene in all of its gruesome detail:

TV Show:

“But when do you know it’s OK to crawl out of the mud and rape her [as Bill does in one scene]… ”

--Stephen Moyer in a 2009 interview with Nylon Magazine (the answer is a bit cut from the original)

--Stephen Moyer at Paleyfest 2011

EDIT TO ADD: 7.) In season 5, when Bill and the other Authority members attack the patrons at the bar and start slaughtering everyone, there's a brief moment where Bill is on top of a woman biting and sucking from her breast. Even if he was feeding from her, what he does here constitutes sexual assault.

Bill Compton is a walking embodiment of rape culture, and a prime example of how our society continues to make excuses for abusive men.

#true blood #the southern vampire mysteries #bill compton #anti bill compton #charlaine harris #dead until dark #living dead in dallas #club dead #sookie stackhouse #lorena krasiki #sophie anne leclerq #stephen moyer #alan ball

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corbie · 5 years

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Words I Have Enjoyed, 2018

Books

J.G. Ballard, The Day of Creation

Jodorowsky, The Incal

Charles Stross, Toast and Other Stories

Richard Feynman, QED: the strange theory of light and matter

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

Douglas Adams, Dirk Gentry’s Holistic Detective Agency

Iain M. Banks, The State of The Art

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Iain M. Banks, Excession

Italo Calvino, If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Frank Herbert, Dune

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Longer Reads

Assorted Alan Kay Emails

“After more than 50 years of doing edge of art research, my conclusion is that "it is delicate". An important part of any art is for the artists to escape the "part of the present that is the past", and for most artists, this is delicate because the present is so everywhere and loud and interruptive. For individual contributors, a good ploy is to disappear for a while. What was wonderful about the big creative projects of the golden age was that they had to be conducted out in the open by lots of people, but the processes and pressures were such that the delicate parts were not done in.”

Are We Awake Under Anesthesia?

What happens to the mind and consciousness under anesthesia?

Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

“A gene for…“, “Brain region X lights up”, “Chemical imbalance”, “Closure”, “Fetish”, and friends.

The Female Price Of Male Pleasure

“Once you've absorbed how horrifying this is, you might reasonably conclude that our "reckoning" over sexual assault and harassment has suffered because men and women have entirely different rating scales. An 8 on a man's Bad Sex scale is like a 1 on a woman's. This tendency for men and women to use the same term — bad sex — to describe experiences an objective observer would characterize as vastly different is the flip side of a known psychological phenomenon called "relative deprivation," by which disenfranchised groups, having been trained to expect little, tend paradoxically to report the same levels of satisfaction as their better-treated, more privileged peers.”

DNA Through The Eyes Of A Coder

“DNA is not like C source but more like byte-compiled code for a virtual machine called 'the nucleus'. It is very doubtful that there is a source to this byte compilation - what you see is all you get.”

A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

“That is the sorry reality of the bazaar Raymond praised in his book: a pile of old festering hacks, endlessly copied and pasted by a clueless generation of IT "professionals" who wouldn't recognize sound IT architecture if you hit them over the head with it. It is hard to believe today, but under this embarrassing mess lies the ruins of the beautiful cathedral of Unix, deservedly famous for its simplicity of design, its economy of features, and its elegance of execution.”

The Recurse Center User’s Manual

I wish every technical working group I’ve been on for the past fifteen years had something one-tenth as thoughtful as this.

The White Darkness: A Journey Across Antarctica

The trial of crossing the Southern continent on foot, alone.

Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks

“One interesting consequence of this process is that the competition between cultures is becoming defunctionalized. The institutions of modern bureaucratic capitalism solve many of the traditional problems of social integration in an almost mechanical way. As a result, when considering the modern “hypercultures” – e.g. American, Japanese, European – there is little to choose from a functional point of view. None are particularly better or worse, from the standpoint of constructing a successful society. And so what is there left to compete on? All that is left are the memetic properties of the culture, which is to say, the pure capacity to reproduce itself.”

Programmer as wizard, programmer as engineer

“I think one of the overarching goals of compute science is to make more programming like wizarding. We want our computers to be human-amplifiers.”

The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks

“Philosophically, the Culture accepts, generally, that questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” are themselves meaningless....In summary, we make our own meanings, whether we like it or not.”

Computing is Everywhere: A conversation with Bret Victor, Creator of Dynamicland

“That was the plan, yeah. I had um I just built up a . . . a set of things I wanted to think about that could not be thought at Apple. It was kind of this — um I had a bulletin board in my room and had like all these little pieces of paper that I had stuck to that board. And so when I went on my trip, I kind of scooped all those papers into like three little plastic baggies, and then at some random public library somewhere in the middle of the country, I spread out those papers on a big desk and tried to figure out what — what is it? Like what — what is the abstraction here? What — what does all these little ideas add — What are the categories here? What does it add up to?”

Lessons from Optics, The Other Deep Learning

“If anything, I wanted to reply that maybe her engineers should be scared.”

How To Be A Systems Thinker: A Conversation With Mary Catherine Bateson

“The tragedy of the cybernetic revolution, which had two phases, the computer science side and the systems theory side, has been the neglect of the systems theory side of it. We chose marketable gadgets in preference to a deeper understanding of the world we live in.”

Deconstructing the Unix Philosophy

Lots of good bits here.

A Basic Lack of Understanding

“This article is about what AI is, but it’s also about why learning what AI is is important in the first place. It’s about how AI is marketed as a commodity today, and what impact that has on people whose work and social lives are touched and shaped by AI on a daily basis. And it’s about how the future of resistance against AI-backed exploitation may not just be technological in nature, but social and cultural.”

One day I'm going to do a survey of the early-21st century AI skepticist essay landscape.

Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power

“To protest that some fairly improbable people, some people who could not possibly respect themselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to miss the point entirely, as surely as those people miss it who think that self-respect has necessarily to do with not having safety pins in one's underwear. There is a common superstition that "self-respect" is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.”

Carbon Ironies

“Most likely, you are a hard, angry person. . . . Beset by floods, droughts, diseases and insect plagues . . . fearing for your children in the face of multiplying perils, how can you feel anything better than impatient contempt for my daughter and me, who lived so wastefully for our own pleasure?”

Utopia and Work

“The utopianism of full employment is so entrenched, as a seemingly uncontested common sense, it’s difficult to imagine a different utopian horizon.”

Disposable America

“As it turns out, all three companies’ histories intersect with each other, as well as with structural changes to the American economy. But first, we have to talk about McDonald’s.”

What can a technologist do about climate change?

No clear answers, but thoughtful and insightful.

Survival of the Richest

Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern. Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

Bourdain Confidential

“As much as I look at houses sometimes and think wow, that would be really nice, if that were my house, I know that I would be miserable. It would be… cleaning out the… the gutters, and you know, what about the pipes freezing, and if you own a home it means you have to vacation in the same place every year. I’m a renter by nature. I like the freedom to change my mind about where I want to be in six months, or a year. Because I’ve also found you might have to make that decision… you can’t always make that decision for yourself, you know… shit happens.”

How to write a good software design document

“A design doc is the most useful tool for making sure the right work gets done.”

The Bullshit Web

“There is a cumulative effect of bullshit; its depth and breadth is especially profound. In isolation, the few seconds that it takes to load some extra piece of surveillance JavaScript isn’t much. Neither is the time it takes for a user to hide an email subscription box, or pause an autoplaying video. But these actions compound on a single webpage, and then again across multiple websites, and those seemingly-small time increments become a swirling miasma of frustration and pain.”

On Production Minimalism

“Do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

“Omakase”

Just read it.

See No Evil

“What if we take these companies at their word? What if it is truly impossible to get a handle on the entirety of a supply chain?”

Estrangement and Cognition

“SF is, then, a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment.”

Layering

“This is good advice, and with a bit of adaptation it can apply to many things in life. Any sort of improvisation must arise from a basic technique. And just as important, the advice understands that there’s nothing more intimidating than a pristine kitchen, a blank canvas, an empty screen.”

The Heart of the Problem

“But consider this for a moment. Perhaps once we are adequately fed, diet becomes far less significant in determining how healthy we are. Maybe almost insignificant. Could it be that when our bodies have enough macro and micro nutrients available most of the time, other determinants of health kick in. The houses we live in. The stress we are under. The pressure of financial and social inequalities. Stigma, abuse and mental illness. Social isolation. And a million other factors with the capacity to make us sick.”

Mass Authentic

“Authenticity seems to stand for the truth behind the curtain, but it is really just the curtain. The presumption that only some feelings in some situations are real, and other feelings, though felt, are somehow false, is authenticity’s main ruse.”

Stickeen: The Story of a Dog

“However great his troubles he never asked help or made any complaint, as if, like a philosopher, he had learned that without hard work and suffering there could be no pleasure worth having.”

The Early History of Smalltalk

Far more here than I could find suitable excerpts for.

The Radical Implications of Luck in Human Life

“The less credit/responsibility you believe we are due, the more you believe our trajectories are shaped by forces outside our control (and sheer chance), the more compassionate you will be toward failure and the more you will expect back from the fortunate. When luck is recognized, softening its harsh effects becomes the basic moral project.”

It’s Harder Than It Looks To Write Clearly

“Everything we write is, in a sense, translated from another language, from the chatter we hear inside our head, translated from that interior babble (more or less comprehensible to us) into (what we hope will be) the clearer, more articulate language on the page. But during the process of that translation, basic clarity often suffers—sometimes fatally!—when, for whatever reason, we feel that we are translating our natural speech into a foreign language: in other words, when we are writing.”

It Isn’t About The Technology

“Yet the decentralized Web advocates persist in believing that the answer is new technologies, which suffer from the same economic problems as the existing decentralized technologies underlying the "centralized" Web we have. A decentralized technology infrastructure is necessary for a decentralized Web but it isn't sufficient. Absent an understanding of how the rest of the solution is going to work, designing the infrastructure is an academic exercise.”

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction

“For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant feature of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical but rooted in the phenomenon of watching.”

If the Point of Capitalism is to Escape Capitalism, Then What’s the Point of Capitalism?

“Freedom from exploitation. Freedom from control and domination. Freedom to find, develop, and realize ourselves. The freedom to live lives which really sear us with meaning, purpose, and fulfillment — instead of being crushed with anxiety, bruised by competitiveness, and suffused with fear. So here is the real question. If these are things we are really after — why don’t we just give them to one another?”

The Lax Habits of the Free Imagination

“The lax habits of the free imagination exhibit an appealing open-door policy. But to counterbalance this extreme permissiveness, the celestial process had better employ some sort of disciplinarian, an enforcer, to maintain order. Where else does the famous restraint and brevity of the short story come from? In other words, there must be a plan, an outline. Mustn't there?“

Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

“It's fun to think about, interesting, and completely inaccessible to experiment given our current technology. You can build crystal palaces of thought, working from first principles, then climb up inside them and pull the ladder up behind you. People who can reach preposterous conclusions from a long chain of abstract reasoning, and feel confident in their truth, are the wrong people to be running a culture.”

I’m Broke and Friendless and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life

“When you’re curious about your shame instead of afraid of it, you can see the true texture of the day and the richness of the moment, with all of its flaws. You can run your hands along your own self-defeating edges until you get a splinter, and you can pull the splinter out and stare at it and consider it.”

Mistakes About The Meaning Of Life

“Noting this close relationship between meaningfulness and value is important, since it allows us to draw many implications that can be helpful for people who consider their lives insufficiently meaningful.”

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7r0773r · 5 years

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Normal People by Sally Rooney

Marianne’s classmates all seem to like school so much and find it normal. To dress in the same uniform every day, to comply at all times with arbitrary rules, to be scrutinised and monitored for misbehavior, this is normal to them. They have no sense of the school as an oppressive environment. Marianne had a row with the History teacher, Mr. Kerrigan, last year because he caught her looking out a window during class, and no one in the class took her side. It seemed so obviously insane to her then that she should have to dress up in a costume every morning and be herded around a huge building all day, and that she wasn’t even allowed to more her eyes where she wanted, even her eye movements fell under the jurisdiction of school rules. You’re not learning if you’re staring out the window daydreaming, Mr. Kerrigan said. Marianne, who had lost her temper by then, snapped back: Don’t delude yourself, I have nothing to learn from you. (pp. 12-13)

***

Before Alan can respond, they hear someone calling out from inside the house, and a door closing. Their mother is home. Alan looks up, his expression changes, and Marianne feels her own face moving around involuntarily. He glances down at her. You shouldn’t tell lies about people, he says. Marianne nods, says nothing. Don’t tell Mam about this, he says. Marianne shakes her head. No, she agrees. But it wouldn’t matter if she did tell her, not really. Denise decided a long time ago that it is acceptable for men to use aggression toward Marianne as a way of expressing themselves. As a child Marianne resisted, but now she simply detaches, as if it isn’t of any interest to her, which in a way it isn’t. Denise considers this a symptom of her daughter’s frigid and unlovable personality. She believes Marianne lacks “warmth,” by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her. (p. 68)

***

He doesn’t remember how he got back to her house, whether they walked or took a taxi, he still doesn’t know. The place had that strange unfurnished cleanliness that lonely houses sometimes have. She seemed like a person with no hobbies: no bookcases, no musical instruments. What do you do with yourself at the weekends, he remembers slurring. I go out and have fun, she said. This struck him even at the time as deeply depressing. (p. 134)

***

There’s always been something inside her that men have wanted to dominate, and their desire for domination can look so much like attraction, even love. In school the boys had tried to break her with cruelty and disregard, and in college men had tried to do it with sex and popularity, all with the same aim of subjugating some force in her personality. It depressed her to think people were so predictable. Whether she was respected or despised, it didn’t make much difference in the end. Would every stage of her life continue to reveal itself as the same thing, again and again, the same remorseless contest for dominance? (p. 198)

***

After the funeral he cried, but the crying felt like nothing. Back in fifth year when Connell had scored a goal for the school football team, Rob had leaped onto the pitch to embrace him. He screamed Connell’s name, and began to kiss his head with wild exuberant kisses. It was only one-all, and there were still twenty minutes left on the clock. But that was their world then. Their feelings were suppressed so carefully in everyday life, forced into smaller and smaller spaces, until seemingly minor events took on insane and frightening significance. It was permissible to touch each other and cry during football matches. Connell still remembers the too-hard grip of his arms. And on Debs night, Rob showing them those photographs of Lisa’s naked body. Nothing had meant more to Rob than the approval of others; to be thought well of, to be a person of status. He would have betrayed any confidence, any kindness, for the promise of social acceptance. Connell couldn’t judge him for that. He’d been the same way himself, or worse. He had just wanted to be normal, to conceal the parts of himself that he found shameful and confusing. It was Marianne who had shown him other things were possible. Life was different after that; maybe he had never understood how different it was. (p. 219)

***

Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget. (p. 232)

***

How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary. No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not. (p. 269)

#sally rooney #book quotes

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